Let the Flames Begin
by fueledbymatcha
Summary: The overworked girls temporarily give up their powers to live out their teen years in relative normality. Naturally, fate has other ideas. Can the RowdyRuff Boys, newly transferred to Townsville High, really be trusted? And what, if anything, do they have to do with the new threat looming on the horizon? Slow burn red, blue, and green pairings. Rating may increase.
1. Turn It Off

******obviously i don't own the ppg. if i did, this would be animated lol.**

******LET THE FLAMES BEGIN**

******prologue**

**__****turn it off**

X X X

Technically speaking, they were turning eleven years old. It was a paradox that only Blossom bothered to think about, although she tried not to let it bother her too much whenever it gained control of her formidable attention span. She certainly didn't ___feel_ eleven years old; none of them did. They had been "born" at five with all the intelligence and emotional maturity to be found in that age bracket – more than their share, in some cases. After all, how many five-year-olds would have the mental stamina to save the world before bedtime? Most children that age had their hands full battling imaginary closet monsters and under-the-bed boogeymen; the PowerPuff Girls dealt with the real deal on an at times daily basis, and the monsters they faced didn't disappear as they got older. In fact, it was just the opposite.

Bank robbers and giant robots, mutated monkeys and effeminate demons, yuppies and snot goblins and frizzy gingers with more money in their trust funds than warmth in their hearts…all of these seemed like small potatoes compared to the horrors of the Real World – the adult world. Blossom secretly marveled at the extent to which Professor Utonium had managed to shelter them, despite the myriad villains they had confronted. It wasn't until they were seventh graders at Pokey Oaks Junior High that they truly began to understand the enormity of their seemingly smaller actions. The man next door might not appear to be much of a threat when standing next to a zombie magician, until you find the three women he has chained up in his basement.

Kidnappers. Rapists. Serial murderers. Animal abusers. Child pornographers. The real monsters, the girls had learned, the most insidious, depraved, perverse and malignant criminals were the ones who hid in plain sight, living under the guise of being ordinary people, banking on the stereotype of the innocent bystander.

The realization had changed them, all of them. Buttercup had become more and more aggressive, with a chip on her shoulder that someone weaker might have called a mountain. On the flip side, Bubbles had grown more withdrawn, afraid anymore to look for the good in everyone, protecting what innocence she had left from the knowledge that sometimes there just plain wasn't any. And Blossom, Blossom had become a dangerously extreme version of herself, doing her damnedest to be perfect, because if she couldn't fix her sisters, it was up to her to compensate for what they had lost. She had to. She was the oldest, she was their ___leader,_ and if she fell apart, the other two would tumble right after her like dominoes.

She was barely fifteen, down twenty pounds from her normal weight owing to a steady diet of coffee, insomnia and stress, when the professor checked her out from school one day right before the lunch bell rang.

"Is something wrong?" she'd asked, immediately on high alert. She didn't have a doctor or dentist appointment that she could remember, and the professor had never taken any of the girls out of school for no good reason.

"It's lunchtime," he'd said simply. "And today I decided I wanted to have lunch with my favorite redhead. It's been a while since we had any decent father-daughter bonding time."

"Okay…" she'd said, confused. "But you're taking me back to school afterward, right? I have a biology test fifth period, and then I need to turn in my homework assignment to Mister George—" The sentence ended in a sharp gasp. "Oh, crap! I fell asleep before I could finish the extra credit part of the assignment last night; I was going to finish it at lunch! Dad, turn around, I have to get my English book!"

"Blossom, honey, it's going to be a little difficult for us to bond if you're hunched over your textbook the entire time. That's the nice thing about extra credit – it's not going to hurt your grade if you don't do it."

"Yes it will!" Blossom screeched. "If I don't do the extra credit, I'm not going to get above a 4.0! If I don't get above a 4.0, I don't stand a chance of making valedictorian! And if I'm not valedictorian, I can't be sure I'll get into an ivy league school!"

"Sweetheart, don't you think you're overreacting a little? You're only a freshman; you've got a whole three and a half years to build up your GPA. One missed extra credit assignment isn't going to be the end of the world."

It was exactly the wrong thing to say – or exactly the right thing, seeing as it had triggered the meltdown that had been building for months inside Blossom's overactive brain. She'd screamed, cried, and if it hadn't been for her adoptive father's highly developed sense of perception that had him hitting the door locks not a moment too soon, would have leaped from the car while it was still moving and flown back to school herself, where no doubt the police, her sisters, and some form of sedative would have been required to restrain her.

As it happened, Professor Utonium had pulled over and parked the car on the shoulder of the road, and pulled his frantic little girl into his arms.

If his words had sparked the initial explosion, his embrace opened the floodgates that dowsed the flaming wreckage of Blossom's peace of mind. For close to an hour, Blossom could do little more than shake with sobs as everything poured out of her alongside her tears: her fear that her sisters would end up imprisoned, both literally and figuratively – that Buttercup's rage would someday grow too large for her to contain and end up killing someone, and Bubbles' distrust of the world at large would leave her a paranoid, agoraphobic self-seclusion; the tremendous burden she felt to keep it together, to lead by example with the hope that the intensity of her self-control could somehow keep the other two from becoming completely unglued.

She admitted how much she hated growing up, how the complexities of life had her questioning her status as a hero; how fighting crime had actually been ___easier_ when they were children, when black and white were so starkly and obviously different, but now there seemed to be new shades of gray popping up every time they turned around and who decided which ones were dark enough to punish and why?

And how long would they be the PowerPuff Girls, anyway? Would they be expected to become the PowerPuff Women? The PowerPuff Old Biddies? When would it stop? Would it ever? Would they even ___get_ to go to college, have jobs, get married, have kids of their own? Would their lives ever really be their own to lead?

Even the professor had had tears in his eyes by the time she'd trailed off into the occasional sniffle. He apologized for not noticing her unhappiness sooner, and for not recognizing its severity when he did at last catch on. That had been the underlying purpose of their impromptu lunch date, he admitted – so that he could fish for whatever seemed to be bothering her as of late. He'd had no idea she was in the middle of a full-blown existential crisis.

They did eventually make it to lunch. Blossom had more than missed her chemistry test, but at that point was too exhausted and emotionally drained to care. She could make it up later, after all, and to be honest, the overwhelming relief she felt at having finally laid all her cards out on the table didn't leave much room for any lingering anxiety.

Over cheeseburgers and strawberry milkshakes, they discussed what had to be done. It was almost more like a powwow between a general and a squad commander than a heart-to-heart between parent and child, but Blossom didn't mind. Talking "business" was her comfort zone, an objective place where she could allow the analytical part of her mind free reign, and at the moment she was grateful for the emotional distance it allowed her.

First things first, the professor would talk to each of the girls alone, as he was doing with Blossom now, because making decisions about their lives without their involvement and consent would be seen as a betrayal of their trust, and only make things worse; second would come therapy, both solo sessions where the girls could talk out their feelings to a nonjudgmental third party, and family meetings to better iron out their group dynamic; and third…

It didn't have to be permanent, the professor stressed. They could change their minds at any time. But they needed a vacation. They needed time to just be normal teenagers, with only normal teenage things to worry about. What was the point of doing good deeds if it didn't ___feel_ good to do them? Doing things to avoid potential guilt from ___not_ doing them was a one-way street towards resentment and discontent, even fighting crime. Townsville had gotten along just fine without the PowerPuff Girls before they were born; it would continue to survive in their absence. Besides, who knew what the future held? It was wrong for the city officials to rely solely on superheroes to save the day.

This was the case the professor and the girls had presented to the mayor two weeks later, after confirming that Blossom's sisters shared the majority of her frustrations and fears. The little man had argued against it, of course, only to be informed that there wasn't anything up for negotiation. Townsville hadn't been under threat of a major villain for nearly two years, and the girls had more than earned their independence. If, when they were legal adults, they decided of their own free will to return to wearing the mantle of defenders of justice, they would – but only by choice, and not by obligation. They deserved that much, at the very least.

Later that night, Blossom had watched Professor Utonium fill a syringe with Antidote X with a pounding heart. The grip of her right hand on the arm of the chair she sat in was strong enough to turn her knuckles white and dent the metal underneath the beige leather upholstery. She did her best to control her shaking as her adoptive father gently swabbed the crook of her left arm with alcohol before placing the needle against her skin, just above the periwinkle squiggle of a vein.

"Are you sure you want this, sweetheart?" he asked her one last time.

Sweating, Blossom nodded firmly. "I'm sure. I'm ready."

She didn't feel any different, at first. A little woozy, and suddenly very tired, but she didn't feel any of the things she'd expected to feel – a cold feeling behind her eyes, snuffing out the lasers they could produce, or the warming of the air in her mouth and throat and lungs, melting away the freezing capabilities of her breath. She didn't feel heavier, subject now to the law of gravity, or physically weaker, although her days of punching through concrete as easily as paper were, for the time being, over.

She felt…normal.

And she was: completely and utterly ordinary.

It had been a long year of adjustments. The first six months had been therapy-intensive, with each of the girls going once per week, plus bi-monthly family sessions. They took a trip over the summer to Disney World, an honest-to-goodness family vacation, and came home with an extra suitcase full of souvenirs and their very first sunburns. The start of their sophomore year and the tapering down of therapy appointments afforded the girls a surplus of free time after school, and they happily filled it with extracurricular activities, dates with friends, movies, parties, naps, and practices.

Blossom, for all she relished her newfound freedom, desperately missed being able to fly, and so joined the school's cross-country team. Running alone, pacing herself, letting the wind whip through her hair and indulgent daydreams through her busy brain, wasn't quite the same as taking to the air, but it filled the void inside her well enough. To balance things out socially and keep her competitive edge, she took up tennis, and found a new way to look cute and keep her reflexes sharp and action-ready at the same time.

Bubbles, whose name all but demanded it, auditioned for the glee club and swim team. On stage and in the pool, performing with her fellow cast members and cheering on her teammates, her own defensive bubble of isolation gradually thinned until one day she awoke to find it had popped completely. She was in her element surrounded by loving and supportive friends, and everyone agreed that she had never looked happier, which was saying something.

Things were more difficult for Buttercup. She was still tough, no doubt about it, but she had the most trouble reconciling her more violent urges with her newly fragile body. She worked out almost daily, fearful of blunting her edge any further, and for a time it seemed as though she would be the first to request the return of her powers. It was Bubbles, of all people, who convinced her otherwise.

"It's easy to act tough when you've got the muscles to back it up," she'd said, standing at the threshold of the warzone of dirty clothes, video game debris and empty energy drink cans that Buttercup called her room. "But to accept the parts of you that are vulnerable now, and not be ashamed of them, that's real strength. You've never been afraid to be yourself, Buttercup. Please don't start being afraid now, even if things have changed. You're still you, and no matter what else you might lose, nothing can take away the power in your heart."

Buttercup had told her to stop trying to make her gag, but the words had helped more than she would ever admit. She cut back on the workouts and focused her energy on skateboarding, which required technique in addition to stamina. She picked up a used full-size bass and a small amp at a garage sale, and found her own form of meditation in patiently teaching herself the chords of her favorite songs. And when she just ___had_ to hit something, she took it out on the punching bag the professor allowed her to install in the basement.

And so here they were, one month away from their technically-eleventh-but-still-sweet-sixteenth birthday, just a trio of average, remarkably well-adjusted high school girls with a lot of good friends, a few catty but ignorable non-super-powered enemies, a solid family bond, and one hell of a party to plan.

At least, they ___were,_ until first period chemistry, art, and trigonometry one Monday morning brought with them three faces from a not-distant-enough past, and pulled the rug out from under the sisters' recently righted world.


	2. Ready, Set, Go!

**woohoo, a follow! at least one person's enjoying this so far lol. i hope people keep reading! i promise it's gonna get really good... also i changed something i forgot to fix before i uploaded the prologue (it was late and i was super tired): bubbles joined the swim team, not the spirit squad. so yeah, sorry for any confusion. m(_)m**

**chapter 1**

_**ready, set, go!**_

X X X

The tip of Bubbles' little pink tongue stuck out from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on getting her graph lines perfectly straight. They were beginning a new assignment in art today – using a grid to copy a picture as exactly as possible – and she wanted hers to be perfect. Art was her best class, next to gym, and she depended on getting A's in both to keep her GPA at a B+ level. She would never be the egghead that Blossom was, but it was still important to her that she do well where she could, and prove to everyone that she was more than just a pretty face.

Another line down, she exhaled the breath she'd been holding, and caught sight of the little blue light flashing at the top of her cell phone, alerting her that she had a new text message. Glancing up to make sure her teacher's attention was focused elsewhere, she opened her inbox.

_so bored already.. want 2 hit the igloo 4 lunch?_

It was from Robin, whose assigned seat was two tables away from Bubbles. Robin had turned sixteen three weeks ago, and would take any opportunity to make use of her new driver's license and not-so-new-but-still-her-baby car.

_heckyes! _ Bubbles stealthily texted back. _ive been craving a butterscotch sundae 4everrrrr_

She hit send just as the classroom door opened, and looked up to see a boy she couldn't remember ever seeing around school before enter the room. He was tall and athletic-looking, dressed in black skinny jeans, blue Vans, and a cobalt-and-navy plaid button-down with the sleeves cuffed to his elbows, worn over a black V-neck shirt. His muscular forearms were tanned and tattooed, with the most visible ink being a large anchor on the inside of his left arm, and the word SAVVY in Old English script on the outside of his right. Around his neck hung a black leather cord with a shark's tooth for a pendant – a fitting accessory, thought Bubbles, for a person with eyes the color of the ocean.

Her phone flashed again, signaling Robin's reply.

_4get the sundae, id kill 2 have HIM covered in butterscotch! wut a cutie!_

_No kidding!_ Bubbles thought to herself. His blond hair was on the long side, framing a boyishly handsome face that was somehow familiar, and oh wow, he had the most beautiful mouth she had ever seen on a guy, with full, dark, soft-looking lips…

She wondered if this was a moment like in the movies, when two people who've never met recognize each other anyway, because that's what happens when soul mates are reunited. She wondered if this was how love at first sight was supposed to feel.

She was about to text her suspicions back to Robin, when Miss Morris's voice sprayed every single one of the butterflies in Bubbles' stomach with insecticide.

"Boomer Jojo… All right, I've added you to the role. There should be an empty seat in the back, at table six."

_Boomer Jojo?_ Bubbles' brain echoed. _No way. No freaking way!_

She caught his eye as he passed, and a shiver ran down her spine. This close, there was no mistaking him. He'd…grown, that was for sure, but in the matured lines of his face, she could still see the smug, sneering little boy she had once defeated with a kiss – the first kiss she ever given to anyone outside her immediate family.

Bubbles blushed at the memory, but Boomer didn't acknowledge her at all as he took his seat. Not a smirk, not a wink, not even a nod to indicate he had any memory of her in return. But that was impossible! She'd grown up, too, but she was still…well, herself! Unless he was planning something…

Bubbles shook her head. Of course he was planning something, he was a RowdyRuff Boy! And if Boomer was here, then chances were his brothers were lurking about somewhere nearby. She had to text—

Her phone flashed again, this time with two new messages, one each from Blossom and Buttercup.

She raised her hand.

"Yes, Bubbles?" Miss Morris asked.

"Bathroom?"

Her teacher nodded. "Take the pass."

Bubbles scurried out of the room, afraid to look back, chased by the feeling that the ocean-eyed boy really _was_ a shark, and the ship that she was clinging to was rapidly sinking.

X X X

"What the _fuck!_" Buttercup snarled, pacing the length of the girls' bathroom. "Where the fuck did they come from? Where the fuck have they _been?_"

"More importantly," said Blossom, sitting on the lid of a toilet in an open stall, chin propped on one hand, deep in thought, "why are they here, and what are we going to do about it?"

Buttercup shook her head. "We _have_ to get our powers back."

"What?!" Bubbles squealed. "No! I'm not ready yet! Coach won't let me swim unless I'm regular! He says it would give the team an unfair advantage at meets and we'd be disqualified if anyone found out!"

Buttercup snorted and rolled her eyes. "Hmmm, let's see, doggie paddling, or saving the city from a trio of douchenozzles who think they stand a chance of winning now that their balls have dropped?" She pretended to weigh both options with her hands. "Gee whiz, that's a tough one!"

"You don't have to be mean about it! Swimming's important to me!"

"Well not getting my _ass_ handed to me by the RowdyRuff 'Roids is important to _me!_"

"That's enough, both of you!" Blossom snapped, emerging from the stall. "We're not asking Dad for our powers back—"

Buttercup's jaw dropped. "What?! But—"

"—_yet,_" Blossom finished. "We don't know enough about what's going on. So far, all they've done is show up in class, and I'm sorry, Buttercup, but that's not a good enough reason to attack them. A lot can change in ten years – we know that better than anyone. Until we learn more about the situation, we should avoid taking any rash actions."

"This is bullshit!" Buttercup shouted. "They're _RowdyRuffs._ They were _created to kill us._ C'mon, Blossom, you're supposed to be the smart one – tell me what part of that equation doesn't compute?!"

Blossom sighed, feeling a headache start to build behind her eyes. "_I get it,_ Buttercup. They were assholes. They probably still are. But I for one have worked way too hard to get my life where I want it to be to throw it all away in a moment of panic that might not even be necessary. I'm sorry, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let Brick fucking Jojo or anyone else have that kind of power over me again. If they start some shit, we'll find a way to deal, but until then, they are _not our problem._ Clear?"

Bubbles stared wide-eyed at her usually composed oldest sister. Blossom almost never swore, let alone multiple times in the same sentence, and Bubbles had a feeling that it was shock more than genuine agreement that led Buttercup to grudgingly concur, "Crystal."

"Good. Now let's get back to class before people start wondering if we need a rescue squad."

Blossom pushed open the door, and the three filed out into the hall.

They did find people waiting for them, but rescue was probably the last thing on their minds.

"So," said Brick, leaning against a row of lockers and smirking in that way he had that never failed to get under Blossom's skin, "you guys are the PowerlessPuff Girls these days, huh? Interesting."

Blossom folded her arms across her chest. "In what way?" she asked. "As I recall, we've never needed our powers to defeat you."

"Yeah!" Buttercup smirked. "All we had to do was tease you into submission to send you crying wee wee wee all the way home to Homo Jojo like the whiny little twerps that you were!"

"That you probably still are!" Bubbles piped up.

"Ooh," said Brick, feigning and shiver, "scary! But I think you'll find that my brothers and I have become more than secure enough in our masculinity to shield us from your oh so vicious taunts. Although…" His red eyes traveled the length of Blossom's body, taking in her pink flip-flops and little denim skirt, lingering on the swell of her breasts beneath her pink polo shirt. "…if you wanna try kissing us again, I can promise you there are still parts of us that'll grow bigger when you do."

Blossom scoffed in disgust. "You're a pig!"

Brick shrugged. "Hey, if you want me to root for your truffle, all you gotta do is ask."

"Don't you fucking talk to her like that, jerkoff!" Buttercup snapped in defense of her sister.

"Don't you fucking talk to _me_ until the smartest part of you _isn't_ your mouth, you little meathead," Brick answered her back.

"Oh, I think the time for words is long fucking past…" She took a step forward, hands already clenched into fists.

"Buttercup, _don't,_" Blossom ordered, not taking her eyes off her smarmy counterpart.

"Aw, c'mon, boss," Butch spoke for the first time, already twitching in anticipation. "Let the bitch off her leash. I've missed the feel of her face on my fist."

Blossom shook her head once. "Not here, not now."

Brick laughed. "Seriously? What, do you want us to meet you on the playground after school?"

Blossom smiled at him sweetly. "I would, but I have tennis practice. Meet us tonight, eight p.m., the empty field across from Fuzzy Lumkins' farm."

"You're not gonna say 'be there or be square,' are you?"

"I'd tell you to bring your lunch money, but you'll need it to cover your medical bills."

"That sounds about right. A box of Band-Aids should have us covered, right, boys?"

Brick's brothers snickered. Boomer, whom Bubbles had been watching the entire time, threw her a wink.

She scowled, as much at herself for blushing as at him for making the presumptuous gesture.

"Eight o'clock, then," Brick confirmed. "It's a date."

"Yeah, for your funeral!" Buttercup called after them as they left. "God fucking damn it, I _hate_ those guys!" she seethed, almost shaking with pent-up aggression.

"Don't we all," Blossom muttered.

Bubbles didn't say anything.

Buttercup fished her phone from one of the pockets of her gray men's Volcom shorts and started pressing buttons.

"Who are you texting?" Blossom demanded.

"I'm telling Dad to ready the Chemical X so we can get juiced up again."

"Oh no you don't!" Blossom snatched the phone out of her sister's hands.

"Hey! Blossom, what the fuck? Did we or did we not just agree to fight the RowdyRuff Boys?"

"No, we agreed to _meet_ the RowdyRuff Boys."

Buttercup blinked at her. "What's the difference?"

"Think about it. How did they know we don't have our powers right now?"

"'cause they were listening in on our conversation, duh!"

"Exactly! Which means that chances are they heard that we can get them _back._ So why let us name the time and place to fight? Why give us the extra time to get our powers back, _and_ agree to fight in an unpopulated location? We're sitting ducks right now, in a _school,_ no less – I mean, if _you_ were a RowdyRuff Boy, wouldn't that be pretty high on your list of places you'd love to bust up?"

"Then what gives?" Buttercup demanded. "I'm too amped for your twenty question logic puzzles right now, just spit it out already!"

Both girls turned at the sound of Bubbles' sharp gasp.

"You mean you think _they're_ ducks, too?!" the blonde 'puff exclaimed.

"Quack," Blossom affirmed with a proud smile.

"Enough with the ducks!" Buttercup yelled. "English, somebody, _please!_"

"She _means_ that she thinks the RowdyRuff Boys probably don't have their powers, either!" Bubbles explained, pleased that she had worked out Blossom's point before her brawny sister.

"Nuh-uh…" Buttercup frowned.

Her sisters waited for the possibility to absorb.

She looked up. "…ya think?"

Blossom shrugged. "I think we'll find out at eight o'clock tonight."

Buttercup snorted. "_If_ they even show."

"Oh, they'll show, all right," Blossom sighed. "My biggest concern is that they won't show up alone."

"You think it could be a trap?" Bubbles asked.

"It could always be a trap, Bubbles. Which is why _we_ won't be going alone, either." The redhead tossed Buttercup her phone back. "Mitch is on the archery team, isn't he?"

"Uh, yeah. Why?"

"Tell him to meet us on the south side of the gym at lunch. I have an idea…"

Bubbles gulped. It wasn't that she didn't always trust her sister's ideas, but sometimes Blossom could look downright creepy when she said it like that…


	3. Sweet Nothing

**so titled because this chapter is kind of bubbles-heavy, and not a lot really happens except for moar character development, which to me is as important as moar cowbell. /obsolete meme reference**

**madame fist - thank you so much for reviewing! i'm thrilled you're enjoying it so far, i hope it stays that way! yeah, i def love me some paramore too ;D but tbh i'm just really uncreative with titles. listening to riot spawned this whole story, and when i needed a penname i just ran with the theme XD; worry not about blossom's vocab! she only curses under duress, or when she needs to "speak buttercup" when bc's too "arrghh!" to listen to real words. and oh absolutely use that line! hell i'd be super surprised if i was the first on this site to think of that pun, there are so many stories here and it really does beg for it lol. that and all the ways they could "explode," mwaha XD my mind is so not the cleanest place to live...**

**aeterna rose - oi you flatter me! m(_)m i'm not worthy! m(_)m aah thank you heaps, i'm having a great time writing this story and will do my best to keep my updating pace going strong, with or without reviews! ^_^v**

**chapter 2**

_**sweet nothing**_

Bubbles had never felt more off-balance. She hadn't expected Boomer to return to class, but there he was at the back of the room when she walked in. He was ignoring her again, too; he hadn't even looked up, even when Miss Morris said her name and asked her what had taken her so long. Bubbles had mumbled something about it being "that time of the month" and taken her seat quickly and quietly. A text from Robin asking if she was okay didn't surprise her – Bubbles knew her face was like a book published in large print: even people who were half-blind could read it, and right now she was broadcasting confusion and uneasiness like a lighthouse, alerting anyone who cared to look that the coast of Utonium Land was pretty rocky.

_ill tell u after class,_ she texted back, and did her best to concentrate on her assignment.

Buttercup wasn't fairing much better. Behind the crenelated wall of her stony glare, her defenses were working overtime. When Butch had shown up in her chemistry class, her every survival instinct had gone haywire, and she'd had to force back the urge to cobble together a makeshift bomb from the nearest ingredients (one didn't grow up the daughter of a chemistry professor without picking up a thing or two) and put him out of her misery before he could so much as open his textbook.

And the fucker didn't even acknowledge her existence! He just sat there, two rows to her left and two to the front, next to Tammy Oliver, who carried a hemp backpack and probably owned stock in Visine. Maybe her residual fumes were making him zone out.

No matter. Whether he was riding some kind of contact high or she was being snubbed, Buttercup used the time to her advantage, and studied her enemy.

He definitely wasn't five years old anymore. Five-eleven, maybe, the same as his brothers, and she could tell from his lean, broad-shouldered build that the past decade hadn't turned him lazy.

He wore an outfit she might have found in her own closet: black Dickies with a wallet chain, neon green Chucks, and a black Monster Energy/Fox Racing motocross tee. He sported two black leather cuffs on his left wrist, and a tattoo on his neck of a four-pointed shuriken. Buttercup rolled her eyes at the design – a stealthy ninja, Butch Jojo was emphatically _not._

From where she sat, she could only see part of his profile, but the image of his face in the hallway was imprinted indelibly on her mind. Most clearly, she could picture his eyes – the same forest green eyes from her childhood, still full of malice and provocation, but now lent an added intensity by the heavy, straight slashes of his eyebrows. When he stared at her now, she could feel it in a way she couldn't before, as though he'd honed his gaze like a blade. She knew she'd have to strengthen her own if she didn't want to get cut.

For her part, Blossom had never enjoyed a math class less in her life. She could feel Brick Jojo's stupid red eyes in his stupid red head wearing that stupid red hat – well, before Mr. Hillard had made him take it off – burning holes into the back of her neck the entire period, and endless questions built up and lodged their way into the algebra refresher word problems she ordinarily loved solving.

_Jane has $5000 in her bank account. She spends 32 percent on clothes, 5 percent on groceries, and has 16 percent stolen by the RowdyRuff Boys.  
1. How much money did Jane spend on clothes?  
2. If the 'ruffs returned to Townsville to steal Jane's money, why did they enroll in school?  
3. What percentage of the money is Jane left with?  
4. At what age did Brick Jojo's jawline square off like that, and could he realistically use his cheekbones as edged weapons?_

Ugh. Confound her hyper-inquisitive brain.

When the bell rang to signal the end of first period, Blossom nearly slumped out of her chair in relief. Never had she been more eager for any math class to end.

Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one who had bolted for the door. In the bottleneck crush of students flooding out into the hallway, she found herself pushed up against the back of the one person she wanted to be furthest away from.

Brick's back was solid, clothed in a red Citiesville Diablos hockey jersey. Blossom didn't know whether it was the hellishly named team he supported, or the possibility that Brick was actually _from_ Hell, but the guy gave off heat like a furnace. He even smelled warm – spicy and peppery and a little like…chocolate?

She wanted to melt when he twisted around to look at her – not in a gooey, romantic way, ew, but so she could slip right through his fingers, around him and out the door. Anything to get away from that smug grin he was now flashing her way.

"Reconsidering my offer?" he asked, one red eyebrow arching lasciviously.

"What offer?"

He lowered his face down to hers and whispered, "Oink, oink."

Blossom swallowed down a dry heave and pushed past him.

"Lay off the Hershey's," she muttered, and didn't stick around to see the amused confusion at her retort that crinkled his brow just so.

But even after first period, there was no real escape for any of them. Blossom and Buttercup had gym with Butch and Boomer. Bubbles had French with Brick, history with Butch, and English with Boomer again. Buttercup had business with Brick and photography with Butch, Blossom had Japanese with Boomer and, had she been looking to go on a diet, fourth period honors English with Brick more than curbed her appetite by the time the lunch bell rang.

"For crying out loud, they're fucking _everywhere!_" Buttercup cried out, loudly, tugging with both hands at her short black hair.

Blossom sighed and rubbed at her temples. The headache that had started behind her eyes earlier had gradually wrapped its way around her skull and now throbbed dully in time with her heartbeat.

"They're just trying to psych us out," she said. She didn't add that it was working, too. Who knew that seeing the RowdyRuffs behave like ordinary, non-delinquent high school students would be even _more_ nerve-wracking than watching them commit thousands of dollars in property damage, grand theft and personal injury?

But that was the thing – the girls kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the anticipation was building inside each of them like a corked tea kettle at full boil. The longer it went on, the more off-balance they felt, protective reflexes spiking every time one of the boys rounded a corner or shuffled some papers or got up to sharpen a pencil, only to be pushed aside by the knowledge that there wasn't any real threat to respond to, not yet anyway. They hadn't felt this way since they were five, running from the spine-chilling darkness of a room they all knew, intellectually, to be empty.

"And where the hell is Bubble-butt?" Buttercup asked as they got in line for the school store, she to grab a burrito before meeting Mitch, and Blossom simply waiting with her, nursing a Dr Pepper from one of the vending machines, hoping the caffeine would calm her head and that the sugar would settle her stomach.

"She went to the Igloo with Robin."

"What?! That traitor! Why does she get to chow down on ice cream while we're stuck doing covert ops?"

"I told her to go," Blossom admitted. "You know how she gets when she's all frazzled, BC. She needed a break."

Buttercup gaped at her in disbelief. "And I don't?"

"No, you don't. You're the tough one; you can suck it up, just like me," Blossom quipped with a smile.

"Oh, you suck, all right," Buttercup muttered darkly, but pride in her status as the sturdiest 'puff kept her from pursuing the argument. She approached the counter, digging three dollars out of her pocket. "Beef burrito and a Mountain Dew."

X X X

"I still can't believe the cute boy is a RowdyRuff," Robin said, for like the umpteenth time. "I thought evil was supposed to mean ugly?"

Bubbles buried her face in her arms, which were folded on the tabletop in front of her. Blossom had let her off going with her and Buttercup to meet Mitch so that she could have an hour's reprieve from jumping every other second at the boogeyboys' lurking like trolls under every stairwell, only to have them pop up in conversation every other sentence, courtesy of Bubbles' best friend.

"I _know,_" she mumbled miserably, then raised her face to rest her chin on one wrist. "I feel so betrayed. How could Disney lie to us like that?"

Robin rolled her eyes. "Oh, ha ha."

"Excuse me?"

Both girls sat back as their waiter set down their orders.

"One butterscotch sundae, no nuts, and one banana split, extra whipped cream."

"Thank you!" Bubbles chirped, smiling at him sweetly.

The waiter – Skip, according to his nametag – blushed and smiled in return. "If you ladies need anything else, don't hesitate to flag me down."

"We will, thanks," Robin assured him, and dove into her sundae with relish as he backed away. "But seriously," she continued around a mouthful of cold fruit and synthetic syrup, "it's bad enough they've shown up again, but showing up _and_ being that attractive at the same time? That's just obnoxious."

"You're telling me," Bubbles sighed, scraping the warm butterscotch off the vanilla ice cream to eat first, as was her habit. "I just can't imagine what they're doing here after all this time. Especially if they don't have their powers anymore. I mean, what could Townsville possibly have that wherever they were doesn't?"

Robin shrugged. "Honestly? You and your sisters are the only things that come to mind."

"But we're not even _us_ anymore, not in the way that would interest the RowdyRuff Boys."

The brunette arched an eyebrow. "You sure about that?"

"Positive," Bubbles declared. "The only thing they've ever wanted from us is our heads mounted on their wall."

"Ew." Robin made a face and shook her head. "I knew I shouldn't have let you watch _Sin City._"

"But I liked it! Hartigan and little Nancy Callahan were so sweet together, and when that Yellow Bastard finally got his…" She scowled in satisfaction and stabbed at her ice cream with disturbing brutality.

"…right." Robin cleared her throat and steered the conversation back to the matter at hand. "Anyway, what if they _do_ still have their powers? With you guys being all, you know, regular now, how are you gonna keep them from…from doing the creepy head thing, if they've still got it out for you?"

Bubbles shifted uncomfortably. "Blossom has an idea about that. She and Buttercup are setting it up right now."

"Do you think it'll work?"

Bubbles shrugged. "I hope so. I mean, if it doesn't…" she trailed off, then shook herself. "What am I saying? Of course it will! We may not be superheroes anymore, but Blossom's still our leader, and the smartest one out of all of us. I trust her judgment."

Robin put down her spoon as a familiar knot of sympathy and concern for her friend tightened in her stomach at Bubbles' unspoken doubts. She may never have been a PowerPuff Girl herself, but it would be wrong to claim that her neighbors' transformation from crime-fighting champions to everyday citizens hadn't affected her, too.

She'd always worried about them, always said a little prayer in her heart whenever she caught sight of their neon contrails streaking across the sky, off to save the day against whatever bloated baddy of the week had turned up in town; she hadn't expected that, once they had traded their heroics for more conventional hobbies, she'd worry about them even _more._

For all intents and purposes, they were just as helpless as she was now, and the fact that they had once been all but invincible only seemed to hammer home their mortality that much harder. Robin knew what it was to get hurt as a human. She'd spent her whole life being taught what was dangerous, what to avoid, when to walk – or run – away.

The Utonium sisters had no such training. They no longer sought out trouble the way they used to, but if trouble found them instead, would they really know what to do in the face of it? They'd grown up believing they could handle themselves in any situation, but if their beliefs hadn't adapted to their now limited capabilities…

She reached across the table to take one of Bubbles' hands in her own.

"Just…be careful, all right?" she pleaded. "And I mean, like, super-duper-extra-crazy-with-a-cherry-on-top careful."

Bubbles smiled and squeezed her hand tight. "I will. Promise."

"Promise, schmomise. Pinky swear."

Bubbles laughed. "I, Bubbles Utonium, pinky swear to be super-duper-extra-crazy-with-a-cherry-on-top careful." They linked little fingers, and shook on it.

"But, you know," Robin said once the earnest moment had passed, and both girls returned to picking at their sundaes, "if something _were_ to happen that landed you in Boomer Jojo's arms, I can think of worse ways to die."

"Robin!" Bubbles squealed, giggling at the thought.

"Hey, if you're gonna go, go for broke, that's all I'm saying."

"You're terrible."

"You're taking French, aren't you? You can't tell me you're not familiar with the phrase _la petite morte._"

"Ohmigod, we are not having this conversation!"

"_Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight!_" Robin sang, substituting her spoon for a microphone.

"Shut up shut up shut up!" Bubbles hissed, feeling her cheeks grow hot.

"Everything okay here, ladies?" Skip asked, passing by their table with a pitcher of water. Bubbles recalled one of Blossom's theories that there was some sort of universal law wherein all waiters and waitresses, upon becoming employed as such, developed a sixth sense that spurred them into checking on their customers at the most awkward possible moments.

"We're fine," Robin assured him with a mischievous grin. "In fact, Bubbles here will be more than fine in just a few hours, won't you, Bubbles?"

Bubbles buried her face in her hands. "I completely hate you right now."

"_Boom, boom, boom, boom, I want you in my room! Let's spend the night together, from now until forever!_"

She peeked at Skip from between her fingers. "Check, please? And something to hang myself with?"

Skip laughed nervously. "Um, the former I can manage, but it may take me a while to weave a noose out of empty straw wrappers."

"Oh, you _so_ just earned your tip." Robin raised a fist, and Skip bumped her knuckles with his own before swaggering off, beaming proudly.

Bubbles mock-glared at her friend. "You're gonna feel _so_ bad if I do die tonight!"

"Yeah," Robin agreed, sobering somewhat, "I will. So you better not, you got me, Utonium?"

Bubbles' expression softened. "Yeah, I got you. And I am totally gonna get you back for this, too!"

Robin chuckled as she fished her wallet out of her purse.

"Sure you are, blondie. Sure you are…"

X X X

Buttercup swore under her breath as she blew the landing on a varial kickflip and staggered off the blacktop and into the grass. She'd been killing time practicing skate tricks on the outdoor basketball courts for the past hour, waiting for Blossom to be done with tennis practice and Bubbles' stupid glee club meeting to let out, on account of the two-to-one vote against any of them walking home alone until the situation with the RowdyRuff Boys had been sorted out (as if three powerless 'puffs stood a better chance than one against however many possibly powered-up 'ruffs, but try telling that to a crybaby and a nerd with more book smarts than common sense).

She was hot, hungry, pissed off, and even more ready to haul ass off school property than usual. Her last two classes, geometry and English, had been graced by Boomer and Butch, respectively, and it _had_ to be deliberate. If Butch Jojo had, by pure chance, ended up in _two-thirds_ of her classes, then there was no God. That she had seen him race away afterwards on a fucking Triumph Tiger motorcycle had been like a kick in the teeth – bloody teeth decorating the shitty icing on the moldy cake of the whole goddamn day.

Pausing to get her breath back, Buttercup pushed her sweaty bangs off of her forehead, downed the last of her lukewarm Mountain Dew leftover from lunch, and sat down on her board. Shading her eyes from the sun, she glanced over at the tennis courts, where Blossom, in her cute white pleated skirt and squeaky-clean white sneakers and, okay, respectably sweaty white polo shirt, heaved a less-than-ladylike grunt as she thwacked the ball over the net in a powerful serve.

Buttercup smiled at the reminder that her "perfect" sister was still _her_ sister. Blossom might never be as eager for a fight as Buttercup, but she was always _ready_ for one, which was almost as good. It was gratifying to see that underneath her cool exterior, Blossom was just as frustrated by the current state of affairs as Buttercup herself; gratifying to know that while Buttercup had assimilated most of the spice in the professor's concoction, Blossom had a dash of the stuff flowing through her veins, too. Bubbles as well, come to that.

As if on cue, the most dramatic of the Utonium sisters chose that moment to make her entrance, stage right, and settled down next to her dark-haired sibling on the grass.

"Hey," Buttercup greeted her. "How was geek club?"

"Good!" Bubbles chirped, allowing the slight to fly over her sunny blonde head. "We were assigned our parts for the next assembly. The whole thing's going to be genderbent! The girls are doing _Greased Lightnin',_ and I get to be Kenickie!"

"Hah!" Buttercup snickered. "That actually sounds like it might almost be entertaining."

"Yeah. At least it's one thing I won't have to give up, if we have to get our powers back."

Buttercup looked over at her little sister. Bubbles' clear blue eyes held a distant look, even as she appeared to be engrossed in braiding together a few blades of grass, and her nearly constant smile was small and solemn.

"Hey," she said, nudging the youngest 'puff with her shoulder, "don't talk like that. That's not even part of the plan right now."

Bubbles sighed. "I know, but—"

"No buts! Things'll work out, okay? One way or another. I'll make 'em."

One corner of a sweet pink mouth tucked in skeptically and mumbled, "Yeah, right…"

"I'm serious! C'mon, who was the only kid in kindergarten who could force all the square pegs into the round holes and told the laws of physics to kiss her butt?"

Bubbles giggled at the memory. Blossom had been _so_ annoyed, and Miss Keane had sent Buttercup home with a letter to the professor demanding $14.99 for a replacement shape-sorting cube.

"You did."

"Damn right I did, and I'll do it again!"

Bubbles leaned against her strong, beautiful sister, who wrapped an arm around her protectively. She breathed in the comfortingly familiar scent of an overheated Buttercup – a clean, almost grassy smell, intermingled with the lightest intimation of water lily perfume, a gift Bubbles herself had snuck into Buttercup's stocking last Christmas. Buttercup had rolled her eyes at the time, but Bubbles knew how much she secretly appreciated being treated like a girl every now and again.

They stayed like that until Blossom got their attention, waving her tennis racket in the air to let them know practice was over.

"_Finally!_" Buttercup groaned, standing up and offering a hand to Bubbles, who didn't let it go as they made their way toward the girls' locker room.


	4. Déjà Vu

**adksj;aflkadslj. i hope you guys find this chapter up to snuff, because it was a tough one to write. something of a cliffhanger before we get into some meaty ppg/rrb interaction, unf.**

**a.m. rouss - thank you! keep reading and i will ;D**

**aeternus rosa - well you took the time to comment, so the least i can do is the same to say thank you! :D i'm glad you like robin! i hope mitch doesn't disappoint either, i don't think i've ever seen him done this way before... as for their girls' plan, well, they'll definitely get their answer? and then some lol. thanks so much for the support!**

**madame fist - it's funner in the gutter lol XD aah i'm so happy you mentioned the sisterly moments! getting the depth of their bond across is super important to me. i know exactly what you mean - it's their diversity that gives them strength. and blossom can be pretty hardcore when necessary! mad respect ;D thank you again!**

**20 percent derpier - thanks! i hope it continues to entertain :D**

**chapter 3**

_**déjà vu**_

Robin dropped the girls and Mitch off across the road from Fuzzy Lumkins' property at seven. They'd decided to arrive a full hour early, in case the 'ruffs decided to be uncharacteristically punctual, or hoped to enact their own ambush.

They'd told the professor that they and Robin would be helping Mitch with a Gay-Straight Alliance project at the library, which was open until nine, and then getting a slice of pizza before returning home by curfew at ten. It had been a difficult choice to keep him in the dark, but fewer powers ironically came with greater responsibility, on his part at least – he could no longer in good conscience give them the free reign they'd enjoyed as children. At the very least, he would have wanted to come along, and most likely with a police escort. Or he might have disallowed the meeting completely, which just couldn't happen. The girls wouldn't have their sworn enemies believing they were cowards, for one; for another, the sooner they got to the bottom of things, the sooner they could hopefully return to their happily humdrum lives.

_Yeah, fat chance,_ Buttercup thought to herself. Despite the consolations she'd given Bubbles by the basketball courts, she couldn't refute the fact that nothing humdrum ever stayed that way after the RowdyRuff Boys got involved. Even if they did manage to wake up tomorrow morning with their normalcy intact, tonight would be some kind of turning point, for better or worse – and to say Buttercup was having a spot of trouble imagining how the 'ruffs could make anything _better_ would probably be a shoo-in to win at the Understatement of the Year Awards.

She exhaled an uneasy sigh as she watched Mitch ascend the feeble-looking "ladder" of salvaged wood planks the two of them had nailed to a sturdy pine tree when they were eight, an air rifle and a pair of bolt cutters strapped to his back. If they were lucky, he would find enough of the particleboard platform that had served as their tree house (until a combination of puberty and the time-consuming nature of middle school social politics had driven them to "cooler" pursuits) left intact to serve as a secure hunting blind from which he could trim a few branches and line up a decent shot.

A couple of minutes passed, and then the walkie-talkie clipped to right front pocket of Buttercup's cargo pants crackled and beeped.

"_Magic Crotch to Green Leader,_" Mitch's static-laced voice came through the speaker, "_I'm up._"

Buttercup winced. "Mitch, come on, do we have to use the fucking codenames?"

Silence.

Buttercup sighed again. "_Magic Crotch,_ do we have to use the fucking codenames?"

"_I'm sorry, who is this?_"

"…_Green Leader to Magic Crotch,_ you're gonna be Maggot Crotch in about two seconds if you don't get the fuck on."

The apprehensive sound of a throat being cleared bounced down through the branches.

"_Magic Crotch to Green Leader, the platform seems sturdy enough. Don't think I'll have to trim very much to get a good line, either._"

"Awesome. Lemme know when you're all set up."

"_Will do._"

"Where the fuck did you get that name, anyway?"

"_Online Top Gun name generator. Magic Crotch out._"

Buttercup rolled her eyes and reattached the walkie-talkie to her pocket and folded her arms – on her, as much a nervous gesture as one of bravado or annoyance.

"Are you sure he can do this?" Bubbles asked quietly from where she leaned against the base of the tree, fiddling anxiously with Octi. The little plush had been modified into bag candy shortly after they'd given up their powers, and now accompanied Bubbles everywhere, in a jacket pocket or hooked on one of her belt loops if not attached to her purse. Its velvety exterior had been worn by years of fierce cuddling down to lavender thread, but it still retained its dapper felt top hat, and its half-lidded eyes had somehow acquired a look of elderly wisdom.

Buttercup put a finger to her chin and pretended to think about it.

"Hmmm, well, I've seen him hit a bull's-eye from fifty yards away, _without_ a scope, so uh, _yeah,_ Bubbles, I think he can handle it. If he can stop dicking around long enough to take aim."

"Hitting a target's not the same thing as hitting a person," the blonde murmured, and Buttercup understood finally what she meant. But Mitch had agreed readily enough…not that it would have been easy for him to say no to any of them, and most especially to her…

"Jesus, Bubbles, it's not like we hired him to whack somebody. He'll be fine," she snapped, shrugging off the guilt that began to envelope her like the deepening twilight. They didn't have time for second thoughts – hell, they'd barely had time for first ones! This was the plan and they were going to stick to it. They had no other choice.

Or at any rate, no better one.

"Look out below!" Mitch hollered from above, and Bubbles and Buttercup backed away from the tree trunk as a cluster of thin branches and pine needles rained down where they had been standing.

A few seconds later, Buttercup's walkie-talkie beeped again.

"_All set, BC – I mean Green Leader._"

"Solid. Fire at will, Magic Crotch."

They turned their eyes to the field and waved to Blossom, who was keeping lookout for the boys. She nodded and trotted back a few steps closer to the tree line.

Buttercup heard a soft click that anyone within earshot could easily mistake for the sound of a small animal breaking a twig it had stepped on, and her eyes caught sight of a fluttering streak of twinkling crimson as it shot out of the trees and landed near the middle of the field. She grinned broadly.

"_How's that?"_ Mitch's voice crackled over the air waves.

"Looks good, so long as you can do it again about five feet higher, if we need you to," Buttercup told him as she and her sisters jogged toward the landing site.

"_Pfft! Doubt not my skills, young padawan._"

"Yeah, yeah. Load up then shut up, would you? They'll be here soon."

"_Roger that, Green Leader. May the Schwartz be with you. Magic Crotch out._"

"Dork," Buttercup muttered. She turned the walkie-talkie off and stashed it in one of the deep calf pockets of her pants.

Blossom, being closest to the road, reached the sequined red hair ribbon first. In the rapidly dimming twilight, it looked, for a moment, like a small trail of blood.

She shook the ominous thought from her mind and picked it up by its weighted end, which Bubbles, who had plenty of experience stitching back on the button eyes of stuffed animals (casualties of love – and super-strength), had earlier sewn around one of the air rifle's ball bearing projectiles.

"Feels kind of like old times, doesn't it, girls?" she asked as the others approached, hoping that her smile didn't look as forced as it felt.

"Not really," Bubbles admitted. "We never had to be this…sneaky…when we were younger."

"Or use weapons," Buttercup added.

"Or lie to the professor."

"Or rely on Mitch 'The Bitch' Mitchelson for backup."

"Okay, okay!" Blossom relented, throwing up her hands. "It feels nothing like old times. With any luck, it won't be the beginning of new times, either. And I thought Mitch was your friend!"

"He is," said Buttercup. "I'd take a bullet for him. Because if he got shot, he'd cry like the bitch he is. Ask him, he'll own it."

She considered Blossom's perplexed expression a rare treat.

"…whatever," the redhead surrendered. "Anyway, I know it's been a while since we've done anything remotely like this, so just—"

"Ooh, headlights!" Bubbles interrupted, bouncing excitedly up and down. "I see headlights!"

"—don't do anything reckless," Blossom finished absently.

The girls watched as an older model white and blue pickup truck slowed as it approached the field, then, spotting them, turned into the overgrown grass and headed in their direction.

"It's them," Buttercup confirmed, her stance tensing and hands already balling up into fists.

"Just relax," Blossom ordered. "Remember, we're only here to talk."

"Sure we are," Buttercup agreed in a way that sounded like she didn't, at all.

The truck rumbled to a stop some fifteen feet in front of them. The engine cut off, but the headlights didn't, and the girls, squinting, moved out of their path as the RowdyRuff Boys emerged, Boomer from the driver's seat, Brick from the passenger's side, and Butch from the back.

As usual, it was Brick who spoke first. "Evening, ladies."

"Likewise," said Buttercup in return.

"_Likewise,_" Butch repeated in a mockingly moronic voice. He raised a cigarette to his lips and lit it with a silver Zippo that he then tossed to Boomer, who lit his own.

Blossom sighed dramatically. "It figures. The one time in our lives we were actually hoping to be stood up, and yet here you are."

"What can we say?" Brick shrugged. "We're gentlemen." Lighting up last, he rudely exhaled a long plume of smoke in his counterpart's direction. Blossom's nostrils flared at the noxious odor.

"And here I didn't think you three could smell any worse."

Boomer frowned and pulled the collar of his shirt away from his chest to sniff himself. His ensuing shrug left his opinion on the matter a mystery. Butch slapped him upside the back of his head.

Bubbles bit her lip to keep from giggling. Buttercup rolled her eyes.

"Enough of this witty banter horseshit," the middle 'puff groused. "What the hell are you three doing back in Townsville?"

Blossom's brow furrowed as Brick's expression…softened? No.

"Isn't it obvious?" he asked. His crimson eyes bore into Blossom's pink ones, and she felt the icy rush of adrenaline surge through her limbs as her heart began to pound – the same sensations she always felt when an attack seemed imminent. "We came back for you."

"Who sent you?" Blossom demanded, pointedly ignoring the potential double meaning of her counterpart's confession. "Was it HIM? Was it Mojo?"

Whatever tenderness Brick had been feigning evaporated at the mention of the latter's name, and his gaze narrowed dangerously.

"Neither. We haven't seen HIM in years, and as for Mojo, if that little fucking faceache doesn't have a death wish, he'll keep well the fuck away from anywhere we might be."

"Why? What happened?"

"Why do you care? You got your answer; I said it wasn't him."

"Then who?"

"No one. We may not be exactly human, but we still have free will, right?"

"I don't know, do you?"

Brick smiled. "Don't be flip, boss. It doesn't suit you."

Blossom folded her arms across her chest. "And what the hell would you know about what suits me?"

"More than you think. I'm your counterpart, remember?"

"You were made in a toilet out of a dog's ass. You're _nothing_ like me."

Buttercup smirked, proud of the snideness of her sister's rebuttal, and Brick flicked the remainder of his cigarette to land at Blossom's feet.

She looked down for only a second to crush it out beneath the sole of her sneaker when she heard a pain-strangled shout from one of the boys, and from behind her, Bubbles' startled scream.

X X X

Magic Crotch – Mitch Mitchelson for tax purposes – squinted through the scope of the rifle, watching the meeting unfold between the crosshairs, his finger poised and ready on the trigger. _Don't shoot unless you see them use their powers,_ Blossom had told him (multiple times, to the point where he would probably hear the command in his sleep).

It was an honor, though, to be able to help his friends, who had done so much for Townsville – for the world, really. After all, who knew how many people they had indirectly saved by taking on the ridiculous number of villains that had plagued the city before their creation? Mitch might owe them his life; he certainly owed them his assistance. And as far as targets went, he'd definitely never had one that was as easy on the eyes as Brick, Butch, and Boomer Jojo. Sure, they were evil sons of bitches who'd once beat the PowerPuff Girls so bad they'd lost baby teeth, but they had grown up into damn fine sons of bitches whose asses Mitch had been given leave to shoot, should he spy a single bioluminescent flash. It was enough of a compromise for him to ogle sans guilt.

If only one of them, just _one,_ could set off so much as a weak blip on his gaydar – Butch, maybe, whose name screamed "dyke" as loudly as his counterpart's dress sense – but alas, Mitch knew better than anyone that Buttercup's tomboyish nature reflected her sexuality about as well as Mitch's own interest in hunting. It was one of the things that had actually strengthened their bond over the years, that neither were books well-matched to their covers: a gay redneck and a straight hoyden. I now pronounce you fag and hag; you may kiss the beard.

The jury was still out on whether that made them equally pathetic or equally awesome, though Mitch would never voice those doubts to Buttercup. Oh, BC was badass, there was no two ways about that, but Mitch wondered sometimes how healthy it was that they always ended up as each other's date for school dances and the like, what with himself still only halfway out of the closet, and she too intimidating to be asked and too stubborn to do the asking. They'd both have to get over themselves someday, if either of them could ever gather up the guts to take a shot at real happiness.

Mitch watched the little spitfire demand something of Brick, her actions speaking alongside her words, both plenty loud enough to convey her hostility.

He didn't know that he wasn't the only one watching.

Perched on a higher branch, a pale, pink-eyed owl crouched motionless, almost unnaturally so. Had anyone been able to read its mind, they likely would have run the other way – not because its thoughts were particularly dark or menacing, but based on the common knowledge that a countdown, once zero is reached, is usually followed by some form of commotion, be it something as triumphant as a shuttle launch, or as destructive as a bomb.

Mitch got a bit of both: the owl launched itself into a screeching bomb of feathers and beak, its talons tearing at the shoulders of his shirt while its wings whipped with vicious force against his cheeks.

"Fuck!" Mitch swore, his whole body jerking into an instinctively defensive position, knees drawn up to his chest and free hand swinging blindly in an attempt to deflect the sharp, sudden series of blows.

Then, just as quickly as it had descended, the owl gave him one last peck on the ear and was off again, disappearing into the night with a cackle that sounded eerily self-satisfied.

Panting from fear and bewilderment, his face, ear and shoulders stinging, he twisted around, eyes alert for a second assault.

"What the _fuck…?_"

A scream from the field wrenched his attention back to the mission at hand, and cold dread suffused his veins as he finally noticed his white-knuckled grip on the still-depressed trigger of the gun.

"Shit!" he hissed, scrambling for the scope. His gaze zigzagged across the field, just as terrified of what he might see when he found his friends again as he was desperate to locate them.

_There!_

In the glare of the truck's headlights, four bodies huddled around a fifth, with Buttercup standing a little ways off to the side – _Thank god…_

Mitch did a colorful headcount.

_Green, blue, pink, red, green…_

He swallowed dryly.

"Oh _shit…_"


	5. The Chemicals Between Us

**four chapters in and this day still isn't over...almost, though. and don't worry, i haven't forgotten about mitch, and neither have the girls! i just hope i haven't forgotten anything else...**

**madame fist - i hope this chapter satisfies! i could barely stop writing it long enough to do pesky real life things, so i hope reading it is just as fun! ;D good ol' mitch...it's always the quiet ones! lol**

**cococandy21 - right? lol. can't give the poor guy too much guff, though, he was really startled XD thanks for reading!**

**20 percent derpier - mitch's thoughts exactly! lol**

**aeternus rosa - hee, i'm glad you found mitch entertaining! i love minor characters, you can do just about anything with them. and oh man, the boys are...not happy lol. the girls, etc. really should have thought things through a bit more...but where would any story be without delicious conflict, mwaha }:D i hope the way things play out is to your taste!**

**chapter 4**

_**the chemicals between us**_

X X X

With a pained grunt, Boomer staggered, one hand flying up to clutch at the base of the left side of his neck.

"The hell?!" Butch snapped, at first thinking his dipshit little brother had been felled by a moth or something equally ridiculous, as had always been the blond's "style."

His brow furrowed in a deep frown when Boomer's hand pulled away, gripping something thin and sharp that had left a small hole in his neck, where blood began to bead. Boomer looked down at the thing in his hand, then up at Butch and Brick in confusion, and then—

"Dude!" Butch lunged as Boomer toppled over, catching him with just enough time to slow his descent to the ground.

Brick was crouched next to them in a split-second.

"Boomer? Boomer!" he shouted, giving his brother a shake.

There was no response.

Frowning, Brick grabbed Boomer's hand and uncurled his brother's fingers from the object that had hit him, and held it up to the light.

It was a small hypodermic needle, tipped on its back end with a red brush – the same kind of dart used to tranquilize animals from a distance.

If Brick's eyes hadn't already been red, they would have turned so from the rage that flash-boiled his blood. His head snapped up to look accusingly at the two of the three girls who'd ventured forward in what had to be feigned concern.

"What the fuck are you bitches playing at?" he snarled.

Bubbles flinched, but didn't take her eyes off of Boomer. One hand covered her mouth in apparent shock, while crocodile tears crept down her flushed cheeks.

Blossom, on the other hand, was pale – ghostly white – and stammering, "W-we're not – h-he wasn't supposed to u-unless you used your powers!"

"He? Who the fuck is 'he?' " Brick demanded. "Butch, stop fucking shaking him, he's out!"

"I'm not!" Butch protested. "I think he's having a fuckin' seizure!"

Horrified, Brick turned back to his youngest brother, who was convulsing violently, clenching his teeth and arching up off the ground like a fish out of water. Around the puncture wound on his neck, a dark something had begun to branch out underneath his skin, as though his veins were being gradually dyed with black ink.

"Jesus Christ!" Brick exclaimed as he and Butch tried to pin down Boomer's flailing limbs. "What the fuck was in that thing?!"

Blossom's mind blanked as time seemed to slow around her. Her heartbeat pounded sluggish in her ears, and Boomer's gasping breaths became slow wheezes. She heard Bubbles' voice to her left, its frantic notes distorted to something demonically deep, "Antidote X! I-it was Antidote X!"

"Antidote X?!" Brick parroted, dully aghast, and the time flood receded as abruptly as it had surged.

"You _idiots!_" Brick shouted in his normal voice. "We lost our powers _years_ ago, there's no fucking X in him for it to eat!"

"We didn't know that!" Blossom said shrilly. "If you hadn't led us to believe—"

"Don't you _even_ try to blame this on us, you self-righteous little shrews!"

Blossom felt the thick ache of tears closing up her throat, prickling behind her eyes

Butch laid a hand on his older brother's should. He was pale and clammy-looking with panic. "Brick, man, we don't have time for this shit, we have to get him to a fucking hospital."

"No!" The word leapt from Blossom's mouth before she even thought to say it.

"The fuck do you mean, 'no?' " Butch spat.

She had to make this right somehow. She _had_ to. "We need to get him to our house. The professor knows more about Antidote X and our physiology than _anybody._ Boomer may not have his powers but he's still not a normal human being; a regular doctor's not going to know _what_ to do for him or how to fix this!"

"Blossom, are you insane?!" Buttercup finally appeared at her sister's side. "We can't let the RowdyRuff Boys in our fucking house!"

"We _have_ to!" Blossom maintained. "If we don't, Boomer is going to die. And you know who's going to be blamed for it if he does."

She watched the grim realization of the extent of their blunder register on the brunette's face, then turned back to Brick.

"Come on, let's get him into the back of the truck. Every second here counts."

Brick and Butch hefted their baby brother into the flatbed of the pickup, with Bubbles and Buttercup following behind. Bubbles steadied Boomer's head in her jean-clad lap, while Buttercup and Butch guarded his sides to keep him from moving too much. Brick leapt down and into the driver's seat, and Blossom rode shotgun to give him directions.

"If he dies," Butch promised, glaring hard at Buttercup with those relentlessly green eyes, "you do, too."

She'd never thought there would come a day that she'd have to look away first when being stared down by an enemy.

Life certainly had an ironic sense of humor.

She tried not to dwell on it, and concentrated on keeping herself and Boomer from being hurled against the side of the flatbed or ejected from the truck completely whenever Brick made a particularly sharp turn.

Up in the cab, Blossom gripped the "oh shit" bar above the window so tightly her hand was beginning to cramp.

"Brick! You're going to kill _both_ your brothers _and_ my sisters if you don't slow down!"

He looked at her with an expression somewhere between quizzical and derisive. "Begging your fucking pardon, Miss Daisy, but I thought time was of the essence?"

"Well, so is getting there in one piece! Make a left on Orchard—_mailbox, mailbox, watch the mailbox!_"

"Shit! Goddamn it, I hate this piece of shit truck, it doesn't corner worth a fucking damn!"

"Then why did you buy it? Or were you playing grand theft auto in the parking lot at Malph's again?"

"Don't fucking start with me, Pinky. Boomer worked his ass off for this goddamn hunk of junk."

The conversation defaulted to awkward silence at the mention of Boomer.

"…I'm sorry," Blossom said quietly.

Brick snorted. "Fuck you."

"I mean it! It was an accident, okay? Believe it or not, I didn't want _any_ of us to get hurt, not even you guys."

"Oh, I think I'll take 'not' for two hundred, Alex."

"Look, don't act like you showed up with the best of intentions, either! A person doesn't need superpowers to hurt somebody else. Just because the playing field's level doesn't mean we're suddenly on the same team any more than it did when we were five."

Brick shook his head, incredulous. "You got that right…"

Blossom folded her arms and pretended to watch the shadowy suburban scenery as it passed outside her window. "Turn right on Peach, then right again on Cypress."

X X X

It was nearly nine o'clock when they pulled into the Utoniums' driveway. Immediately Blossom bolted to unlock the front door and round up the professor, while Brick and Butch carried their unconscious brother into the house and Bubbles and Buttercup brought up the rear. Boomer had stopped seizing a few corners ago, but whether that was a good sign or a bad one, none of them knew.

"Dad!" Blossom called as she searched the rooms downstairs. "Dad, where are you?"

"In here, sweetie!"

Blossom followed his voice to his study, where he was looking over a stack of papers – most likely the most recent round of research projects performed by his students at the university.

"You're home early," he noted, marking the top paper with his Red Pen of Doom. "How did the project—" He set down his pen and looked up. "—go…Blossom, sweetheart, what's wrong?"

Blossom felt herself begin to crack at his caring, comforting voice, but she swallowed hard and held herself together.

"I don't have time to explain everything right now, but we need you. There's a boy, he's been injected with Antidote X and he's…he's in really bad shape, and I—"

The professor had started moving at "we need you," and reached the living room just as the others entered the house. He paused at the sight of the RowdyRuff Boys, and gave Blossom a look that foreshadowed the mother of all lectures would be a substantial part of her very near future.

But for now…

"Get him down to the lab," he ordered. "Bubbles, clear off the center table; Buttercup, ready a saline drip." The two girls nodded and took off for the back of the house, and the boys hurried to follow them. The professor turned again to Blossom. "Do you know how much he received?"

"Three CC's at a point-two-three concentration," she said, her voice small.

"I'm going to assume there's a _very_ good reason you know that. For now."

Blossom nodded miserably, her stomach already beginning to churn with the same sick feeling she always got when confronted with a disappointed authority figure.

"He doesn't have his powers, either," she went on. "None of them do. Brick said they lost them years ago – not that I trust Brick, but they're at least as regular as we are right now."

Down in the lab, Boomer was already laid out on the cold stainless steel table that ordinarily housed a frothing array of beakers and test tubes, flasks, and spiraling glass condensers that sometimes looked more like a miniature construction project, complete with debris, than a delicate scientific operation. Luckily, the professor was between experiments at the moment, and Bubbles hadn't had too much to clear away.

"What's his height and weight?" Professor Utonium asked the boys as he quickly scrubbed his hands in the sink.

"Five-eleven, and I guess about 150? 155?" Brick looked to Butch for confirmation, but his green-eyed brother only shrugged.

"That'll have to be close enough," said the professor, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. "Blossom, the safe, please."

Brick and Butch watched with wide, astonished eyes as Blossom quickly punched a twelve-digit code into the number panel next to the lab door. It wasn't the first time they had been in Professor Utonium's scientific sanctum, but now that they were old enough to appreciate where they were and what they were looking at, they wanted to commit each detail to memory. Just in case.

There was a hiss, like an airlock depressurizing, and a section of the wall slid out to reveal a clear canister full of electric green liquid that had to be the infamous Chemical X.

The boys exchanged glances.

"Will that give him his powers back?" asked Butch.

"I don't know," the professor admitted, filling a syringe with what looked to be about five CC's of his prized creation. "I've never dealt with a double intravenous dose of Antidote X before. Right now I'm hoping this will halt and hopefully reverse his body's reaction to—"

"Single," Brick interrupted him. "A single dose. We were never given Antidote X."

The professor blinked at the redheaded boy in front of him. "Then how…?"

"Mojo didn't have Chemical X when he made us, so he concocted a substitute: Chemical Hex. Basically a magic-infused biohazard. What we got when we lost our powers was Antidote Hex, not Antidote X."

"…then I know even less than I did twenty seconds ago. But I know what's in him _now, _and it only has one opposite."

He tied a rubber tourniquet around Boomer's upper right arm and placed the tip of the needle against a clearly protruding vein in the crook of his elbow.

"If you boys are at all religiously inclined," he said, "now would be the time to pray…"

Every conscious person in the room held their breath as Professor Utonium pushed the needle in, and the plunger down. He dropped the empty syringe onto a waiting metal tray, held a cotton ball against the injection site to stop the bleeding, and untied the tourniquet. Bubbles inched forward to take one of Boomer's hands in her own, and squeezed it tight.

"…did it work?" Butch asked, arms folded across his chest, shifting his weight impatiently.

"Look!" said Bubbles, her gaze on Boomer's neck, where the black stain that had reached his jawline and upper chest was slowly receding. "It's going away! It's working!" The wideness of her smile caused the fresh tears pooling in her eyes to spill over onto her cheeks, and the whole room breathed a sigh of relief.

"Buttercup, the saline," the professor ordered, and Buttercup pushed the pole on which the bag was hooked over to him. He looked at Brick while he explained, "I want to make sure the antidote is completely flushed from his system. When he wakes up, I want you to get at least two liters of liquid down him. Water is best, but we have juice and sports drinks in the fridge upstairs, if something like that would be easier for him to stomach."

Brick nodded, watching the professor insert the I.V. into Boomer's arm, next to where he'd injected the Chemical X.

"How soon should he wake up?"

Professor Utonium shrugged. "That's up to Boomer. He'll wake up when his body is ready to."

"Can…" Butch started. His eyes never left Boomer's face, and looked and sounded uncharacteristically uncertain, almost bashful. "Can we stay here with him?"

Buttercup opened her mouth to protest, but was silenced by a Look from her sisters. The professor glanced at each of the girls in turn with a warning look that brooked no argument.

"Seeing as my daughters are responsible for your being here in the first place, I'll allow you to stay for the night. But there will be no going upstairs, and you're not to be in the lab without at least one of the girls present. Understood?"

Butch nodded, and Brick even managed a respectful "Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, everyone upstairs. Boys, feel free to help yourselves in the kitchen if you're hungry, and girls, I want to see all of you in my study."

The 'puffs gulped in unison, and the five teenagers filed out of the lab like a line of scolded ducklings.

X X X

Butch and Brick sat on opposite ends of the couch in the living room, listening to the words that occasionally escaped Professor Utonium's study.

"Can't _believe_…_lie to me, _that you _stole_ from me_…dangerous, irresponsible…_thought you were more mature than that!"

It said a lot about their mental state that not even Butch could be bothered to muster up the schadenfreude to take any joy in their rivals' being dressed-down by their usually mild-mannered father-figure.

Bored, Butch took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips.

"You got the light?" he asked Brick.

"Dude, you can't smoke in here!"

"Why not? Since when do you give a shit about where we light up?"

"Since fucking Boomer's practically a prisoner in the lab downstairs, retard. I don't wanna get kicked out before he wakes up." He tossed the Zippo to Butch. "Just take it outside."

Butch muttered something under his breath about "fucking bullshit," but got up and headed through the kitchen to go out the back door.

From the study, the girls' voices finally joined their adoptive father's. Predictably, Buttercup's was the loudest.

"What?! That's not fair!"

"Not the party!" Blossom's objections joined her sister's. "Please, _please_ not the party!"

Brick smirked. He'd waited his whole life to hear a PowerPuff beg. Granted, he would have preferred Blossom to be begging _him,_ but it was satisfying nonetheless.

"Are you freaking kidding me?!" Buttercup again. She really had to work on her negotiation skills. Going on the defensive when the other party held the upper hand would only hammer home a more severe punishment. She ought to take a class from Bubbles, who was speaking too softly for Brick to hear her exact words, but whose apologetically accepting tone was right on the manipulative money. He'd always had a feeling the blonde wasn't as weak as she made out, but rather knew how to use her apparent vulnerability to her advantage. Even Boomer had learned how to play the Oblivious Pretty Boy card to get out of more than one potential felony. (Then again, how much of it was an act and how much was genuine Boomer was a riddle even Sherlock Holmes would have one hell of a time solving.)

The girls quieted as Brick guessed a compromise was reached, and a few minutes later they exited the study, Blossom and Bubbles heading for the stairs, looking chagrined, and Buttercup storming angrily into the living room.

"Move," she ordered. "I have to set up the sofa bed."

Brick moved. He'd been going to say the couch was fine, but why ruin the opportunity to watch the most acerbic 'puff engage in manual labor for the likes of him?

"Where's Bitch?" she asked after she'd slid the coffee table out of the way and thrown the couch cushions haphazardly on the floor.

"He went for a smoke out back."

Buttercup didn't say anything to that; only gripped the handle at the foot of the foldout and tugged the mattress out to its full extension.

"Blossom and Bubbles should be down in a minute with sheets and stuff," she told him. "I'm going to bed. Don't fucking steal anything."

Brick gave her a sarcastic salute. "Scout's honor."

"Jackass," Buttercup mumbled, and took the stairs two at a time.

Brick waited until he heard her door slam shut, then sighed and went to join Butch out back, suddenly desperate for a smoke.

He found his green-eyed brother lighting his second menthol off of his first one before dropping the butt in the grass and smothering it with the toe of his Converse.

"Hey," said Brick, putting a full-flavor Pall Mall to his lips.

Butch tossed him the lighter. "Hey."

They smoked in silence for a couple of minutes, until Butch exhaled loudly – a gesture that usually prefaced an unpleasant conversation, in this case one that Brick had been expecting.

"You still think it's a smart idea to call a truce with them?"

Brick shrugged. "What else can we do?"

"I dunno, that whole 'mortal enemies' thing seemed to work just fine when we were kids."

"We're not kids anymore."

"Hello? Earth to fucking Brick, did you miss the part where they nearly killed our fucking brother? Maybe I'm getting rusty in my old age, but that doesn't exactly scream neutrality-friendly to me!"

"You have no idea how much it pains me to admit this, but we _did_ provoke them."

"So what? We provoke _everyone;_ when's the last time someone came at us with a goddamn dart gun because of it? I still wanna know who that fourth fucker is. Hey, wouldn't it be fuckin' hilarious if _we_ were the ones pressing charges for once?"

Brick shook his head. "I don't wanna see the inside of another courtroom in my lifetime, even as the plaintiff."

"Still," said Butch. "Whoever that little shit was, he's gotta pay."

Both boys tensed at the sound of the back door sliding open. Blossom stepped outside, dressed in tiny red mesh running shorts, a pale pink camisole and, if its straps were anything to go by, a hot pink bra. Her hair was down. It reached the small of her back, and sported a bump in near her neck from being in a ponytail all day long.

She paused awkwardly under the scrutiny of both 'ruffs' stares, and looked for a moment like she might dart back inside the relative safety of the house; in the end she stood her ground, even if she did fold her arms self-consciously over her front.

"The sofa bed's made," she informed them.

"Oh, goody!" Butch grinned, pumping his fist in sardonic, old-fashioned jollity and ignoring her scowl as he flicked his cigarette into the yard and pushed past her through the door.

"Sorry it's not Buckingham Palace," she cattily sniped to the still-smoking Brick, whose eyebrows rose questioningly.

"Hey, I'm not bothered. Born in a toilet, remember? I've slept in worse."

Blossom felt her face heat as her earlier indictment of his origins was thrown back in her face.

He let her suffer for a moment before speaking again.

"So how much did you hear?"

Blossom's head snapped up in surprise. She opened her mouth to proclaim her innocence, then thought better of lying to a liar and pretended to study the deep gray clouds scudding along the starry night sky.

"…were you really going to ask for a truce?" she asked.

_All of it, then,_ Brick thought to himself. She was his counterpart, all right.

"What if we were?"

"Why? Why come back just for that? You could have just stayed away and it would have been just as effective."

She looked over at him, and he pinned her with his blood red eyes that looked nearly black in the moonlight.

"What makes you think we came back just for that? You assume too many things, boss."

"What happened with Mojo, then? Why do you hate him so much now?"

"He sold us out," Brick said simply. "You were there for his last megalomaniacal scheme. It wasn't like the others. People got hurt."

She nodded. "Two men died."

"They were going to put him away for life, but he reached a plea bargain with the prosecutor: twenty-five years with a chance for early parole in exchange for valuable information on other supervillains."

"He told them how to stop you. How to make Antidote Hex."

Brick's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Give the girl a prize. They went through two different batches before finally finding one that worked – said they had to raid the sewers beneath IRS headquarters to get the right level of anal-retentive orderliness necessary to combat the chaos brewing in the bowels of the penitentiary system."

"How old were you?" Blossom asked.

Brick exhaled the last puff of his cigarette and crushed it out beneath his shoe.

"Ten," he said.

Blossom felt a stab of something like pity in her heart for the redheaded boy beside her.

"Then what?"

"Then it was juvie for six months, until we were shipped off to a government-funded middle school for 'troubled young people,' which wasn't much different. But it hooked us up with a guy who could do pretty decent fake I.D.'s, so we hauled ass after eighth grade, got jobs – nothing glamorous, but enough to stock the cabinets of our shithole apartment with ramen and still have a little left over to stash in the mattress. We did our freshman year going to night school, and once that was over, we counted our combined savings and moved back here."

Blossom was silent for a moment while she digested all this new information.

"Do you…do you have a place to stay here?"

Brick looked suddenly hesitant, and his gaze flickered between his counterpart and the back door. "Well…y'see, we were kind of hoping that you guys would have a spare room or two…"

"W-what?!" Blossom spluttered. "You – you want to stay _here?_ At _our house?_"

Brick's nervous countenance slid into a foxlike grin.

"You…" Blossom's panic tapered off into peeved comprehension. "You're kidding."

Brick winked. "How can you be so smart and so gullible at the same time?"

She blushed anew with embarrassment and socked him on the shoulder. "Jerk!"

"Ow, hey!" Brick laughed. "Which sister are you again, Buttercup?"

Blossom ignored him. "Where _are_ you staying, then?"

"Russell's Auto Repair. There's an apartment above the shop. Russell Junior cut us a deal on the rent in exchange for helping out at the shop after school and every other weekend."

"Oh. That's…that's good. I can't believe you're…"

"What?"

"Sorry, it's just…I mean, even _you_ have to admit it's a little weird. The RowdyRuff Boys making an honest living."

"Ah. Well. Crime's less fun when you're no longer bulletproof."

"Is that the only reason you've gone straight? Because you had to?"

Brick's only answer was a shrug.

Blossom nodded. For a moment, Brick could have sworn a look of disappointment crossed her pretty features, but it was gone too quickly for him to be sure.

"Bubbles is down in the lab, if you want to sit with Boomer for a while," she told him. "And Dad's asked that you not take off as soon as he wakes up – he'd like to look him over one more time to make sure he's all the way in the clear."

"Yeah. Tell him…tell him thanks for me. For us."

"Tell him yourself," she said, and went back inside the house without a second glance.

Alone again, Brick leaned against the wall and exhaled at length. He lit another cigarette and smoked in silence, in the dark.


	6. Part of Your World

**so this is one day down, finally, and now that things are starting to roll forward, I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU GUYS: **

**would you prefer chapters more alike in length to the first few, with more frequent updates, or would you rather wait longer for more content? in other words, do you want a commercial break every few "scenes," or a longer one, but with the bonus of getting a whole "episode" at once? keep in mind, i'm talking chapters roughly twice as long as this one, which is my longest chapter to date.**

**please let me know, either in a review or by PM or by responding to the poll i've put up on my profile page, which i'll be keeping open for a week or two, depending on my schedule and how fast the results tip one way or another.**

**as always, special thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter! i appreciate all of your comments so much!**

**aeternus rosa - hmmm, you may be onto something...but a lot remains to be seen (from my end, too! haha) ;D mojo sux, true, but i'm sure he has his own convoluted sense of justification behind it all...**

**20 percent derpier - i'm...not sure i get it, but i'm sure you're not dumb :)**

**leohowradlover1025 - there's tons of 'em, in fact! i'm very glad you're enjoying this one! :D**

**madame fist - bahaha! i get that a lot when i drive, too! if a turn's coming up and the person's ridden with me before, they should know where their hand's supposed to go ;D and no way, boomer's waaay too important to kill off, especially right now, when he's all being the lynch pin of things to come... *whistles innocently***

**guest - yay! i'm glad :D i can't promise "soon," per se, but what's a story without a little ~romance~ lol thank you!**

**sweetheart23 - thanks so much! hope you continue to like it :D**

**chapter 5**

_**part of your world**_

X X X

In baby blue yoga pants and zip hoodie, with bunny slippers to protect her feet from the chill of the lab's epoxy-coated concrete floor, Bubbles tip-toed down the laboratory stairs. It wasn't that she felt the _need_ to be silent, per se – she was allowed down here, and there was little danger of waking the boy still laid out on the table – she just felt the _desire._ This room, the room where she'd taken her first breaths, where she'd met her father and her sisters for the very first time, seemed at night to gain a hushed, almost sacred quality that reminded her of what it might feel like to have the run of a museum after-hours.

On the table, Boomer was like an exhibit on the beauty of youth, a wax portrayal of some mythological prince. Gently, almost reverently, Bubbles eased the pillow she had brought down with her underneath his head, then took off his shoes and billowed out the soft plush blanket, taken from the foot of her own bed, over the lower half of his body so he wouldn't get too cold.

Sleeping, he looked almost angelic, liked a cherub that had chucked its wings in childhood for a chance to sail the mortal coil, and experience the ambivalent adventure that was being human. Up close, Bubbles could see that the tattooed rope attached to the anchor on his left forearm curved down to ring his wrist, where it ended in a figure-eight eternity knot; and near the top of his chest – just at the base of the vee of his shirt collar, where his shark tooth pendant normally rested – was a sharp black point, like the top of a star.

Bubbles looked around the room to make sure she was alone, and then slowly and ever so carefully pinched his collar between thumb and forefinger and lifted up the fabric…

...only to drop it as if it had suddenly caught fire when she heard the staccato rhythm of fuming footsteps making their way down the stairs.

Butch paused at the base of the stairs and eyed her with suspicion.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"N-nothing," Bubbles replied, automatically and too quickly – while blushing way too brightly.

"Were you touching him?" Butch stepped forward, until he stood at his brother's blanketed feet. His eyes were wide and wild and of a color that caused her to realize why that particular shade of green was called _hunter._ "Why were you touching him?"

"No, I – I wasn't," Bubbles stammered. As a child, she'd thought Butch had been weird. And evil, of course, but mostly just plain daffy, the way one of the boys in her class would get if he'd forgotten to take his Ritalin.

Now, she wasn't so sure. Now she wondered if, all those years ago, what she'd seen in him was the seed of something far darker and more dangerous being planted. The kind of crazy that didn't win a kid Class Clown at the end of his senior year.

"I just thought he'd be more comfortable like this, when he wakes up," she explained, gesturing to the pillow and blanket, resisting the urge to take a step back.

Butch frowned. "Why do you care whether or not he's comfortable?"

Bubbles shrugged. "I guess…" She looked down at Boomer's peaceful, sleeping face. "I guess because I feel bad. I do!" she added when Butch snorted in disbelief.

"Yeah, right. Like any of you see us as anything more than scum from the cesspool we came from." There was an odd balance of bitterness and resignation in his raspy voice, but his eyes held more challenge than they did hurt.

Suddenly he reminded her of one of the dogs she'd gotten to know in middle school, before she'd given up her powers and had volunteered at an animal shelter, using her special gift with languages to help rehabilitate the cats and dogs that weren't "suitable for adoption."

The dog had been almost a puppy, really: an adolescent Rottweiler named Geezer, who had been bred for fighting. He'd been so vicious at first, no one but Bubbles could get near him – and that was thanks to her indestructible skin, not her way with animals. He'd been taught to fight by being reared on pure violence, a steady diet of abuse and raw meat that sometimes made him sick, but ingrained within him a literal craving for blood. It had taken months of gentling to gain his trust and start to heal the raw pain around which his life had been built since the day he was weaned.

He would never be a "family" pet, but he did get adopted by a young woman who'd just gotten out of an abusive relationship of her own, and wanted an intimidating dog for protection. When Bubbles happened to run into them both at the park some six months later, Geezer was the happiest he'd ever been. His new owner loved and understood him – they were like two peas in a pod, after all – and it was gaining the purpose of protecting her, whom he loved and understood in return, that finally soothed the savageness inside of him.

Bubbles looked at Butch, alert and defensive at the foot of his little brother's sickbed, and wondered if she hadn't judged him too quickly. She remembered his comment about Blossom letting Buttercup off her leash, and it struck her just how similar they might really be.

"I don't think that," she told him softly.

"That was never your responsibility, was it? Thinking."

She didn't take the bait. She'd never been the most easily riled 'puff, either.

"Why did you guys make it seem like you still had your powers?" she asked.

Butch's jeering smirk fell in surprise at the abrupt subject change.

He shrugged. "To fuck with you. Why else?"

"But you knew we could get ours back, right? You even gave us plenty of time to get them. What if we had shown up and decided to, to hit first and ask questions later? We could have killed you. Why would you risk that?"

Butch rubbed at his nose, then scrubbed a hand through his spiky black hair. He was flustered, stalling. He hadn't expected a line of reasoning from _her_ – and she wasn't about to let on that it had originally belonged to Blossom.

Butch sniffed and twitched – not the way he did before a fight, but a sort of nervous jerk of his shoulders he tried to cover up by cracking his neck.

"Are you really worried about us," he finally said, "or the thought that you might've broken a nail getting blood on your hands?"

"There's been blood on my hands," she told him seriously.

"I ain't talkin' about rubbin' one out while you're on the rag."

Bubbles grimaced. "Neither am I! And that's disgusting!"

"Oh what, like you don't do it? You and your prissy little sisters all sleep with your hands above the covers?"

Bubbles flushed fuchsia, and Butch, mission accomplished, made his way back up the stairs.

"Hey Bloody Mary," he called over his shoulder when he'd reached the top. "Try not to rape my baby brother. He's still a virgin, and I've already got a whore picked out for his next birthday."

Bubbles cringed, but knew it wouldn't do any good to respond. She waited until she heard his footsteps fade in the direction of the living room before looking down at Boomer again. His perfect, plush lips were slightly parted, practically _begging_ to be kissed, and if his perverted brother hadn't said the things he had, she might have tested the brief fantasy that fluttered through her mind, and seen if she really could have awakened him Sleeping Beauty-style.

As it was, she merely tugged the blanket up to his shoulders, and pressed a chaste kiss to her fingers, which she then pressed to his brow.

"I really hope _you've_ at least grown up a little," she murmured, and stuck her tongue out at him just for good measure before heading up to bed herself, closing and sealing the laboratory door behind her.

X X X

"_Are you _sure_ he's okay?"_

Buttercup breathed an exasperated sigh into her phone and rolled over onto her back to stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars scattered randomly across her black ceiling. "_Yes,_ Mitch, he's fine. He's sleeping it off down in the lab."

Even through the phone, Mitch's relief was palpable. _"Thank fuck. That stupid fucking owl! If I ever see that goddamn thing again, it's getting shot and stuffed and displayed on my coffee table. With the arrow still in it."_

"Yeah, well, next time Blossom has one of her 'brilliant ideas,' I'll remind her to include wildlife in her list of variables to plan for."

An owl. A freaking _owl,_ of all things. Buttercup had been too dumbfounded by the randomness of the thing to respond when Mitch had frantically explained what had gone wrong, thought she might have misheard from the lowered volume of the walkie-talkie (from when she'd asked him What The Fuck) and the distraction of her sisters and Boomer's brothers loudly losing their minds only a few feet away.

"Just call Robin and tell her to pick you up," she'd ordered, as fiercely as she could for whispering. "Lay low at her place for a while and I'll call you when things have cooled down, okay?"

Mitch had shakily agreed, but had still sent her a dozen worried texts by the time she'd gotten a chance to check back with him, beginning with _is he ok? fuck fuck im so fucking sorry_ and gradually escalating in paranoia until he was planning an escape route through Canada and across the Bering Strait to Russia, where he could live out the rest of his days surviving on yak milk and trading sexual favors with nomadic Siberian shepherds in exchange for mutton and wool.

"_So they're all staying at your house tonight?_"

"Yes," Buttercup said petulantly, her upper lip twisting into an automatic sneer. "_And_ we're grounded for the next three weeks, _and_ we have to invite them to our fucking birthday party! Another one of Blossom's little fucking gems. She should've just let Dad cancel it. If they come it's gonna be fuckin' ruined anyway."

"_After what happened tonight, d'you really think they'll be jumping at the chance to go?_"

"I don't know. They might jump at the chance to piss in the punch and shit on the cake."

"_Yeah, but why wait that long? Don't they have access to your fridge right now?_"

Buttercup smacked a hand against her forehead and groaned. "Oh, god, I can't eat anything here until we go shopping again…"

"_Naw, there's gotta be some stuff with the safety seals still on._"

"Yeah, awesome. I'll have sour cream for breakfast and pack corn muffin mix for lunch."

"_Don't you people believe in canned food?_"

"Hey, I've told 'em we need to stock up for the zombie apocalypse, but Blossom prefers organic and Bubbles figures there won't be a way to make cupcakes after the electricity goes down, so what's the point?"

"_That is some serious dedication to baked goods._"

"Tell me about it. I'll be good, at least. If anything, peppers'll be even easier to grow, with so many corpses around to fertilize things."

"_Listen to you, all Mufasa-philosophical in the face of a worldwide cataclysm. And people say you're the pessimistic one._"

"I know, right?" Buttercup chuckled. "People don't know shit."

"_Amen, sister._"

She folded her legs and sat up, resting an elbow on one knee and cradling the side of her head in her phone-hand.

"_So…_" There was a muffled noise as Mitch switched his phone to his other ear, filling in the blank air of his obvious hesitation. "_…did you tell 'em it was me?_"

"What the fuck kinda friend do you think I am? Of course not!"

"_Okay, okay! Simmer down there, Sally. But…_"

Buttercup reflexively reached for the ten-inch Rainbow Dash plush next to her pillow, absently hooking an arm around it as she prompted him, "But what?"

"_Well, maybe you should. They're bound to figure it out sooner or later. They'll see us hang, put two and two together…_"

"If any of them can put _one and one_ together, I think I'd die of shock."

"_I dunno, BC. Brick's taking more than a couple honors classes; he might be brighter than he looks._"

Buttercup mentally kicked herself. She had a tendency to forget how smart Mitch was, maybe because he never rubbed it in her face like a certain ginger sister of hers…

Still, she scoffed at the idea that Brick could be as clever as either of them. Overbearing as Blossom could be about it, Buttercup was proud of her sister's brains, even if her way of showing that pride was to call her "zombie bait" whenever she brought home another A+ paper. And Mitch was a lifesaver when it came time to study for exams – he could actually find ways to _get_ Buttercup to study in the first place, which required a level of genius as yet untouched by the rest of mankind.

"With all the red he wears? Doubtful."

"_Hmm._"

"Anyway, you know I got your back, powers or no powers. Anyone fucks with you, they fuck with me, especially _those_ slimeballs."

"'_ppreciated. But, look…I may be a bitch, but I'm not a pussy. Don't tell 'em anything. I'll handle it. Okay?_"

Buttercup huffed an unhappy sigh through her nose. "Mitch, c'mon. We got you into this mess—"

"_Hey, I'm a big boy: I could'a said no, but I didn't. So please, BC, just let me handle it_."

"…fine. But I wanna be nearby when you do."

"_Goddamn right you'll be nearby, I don't want you to let 'em fuckin' kill me! Just…lemme take a punch or two, if it comes to that._"

Buttercup stifled a laugh. "Gotcha. I won't save your sorry ass to save your manly pride."

"_Thank you._"

She grunted an assent. "Well. Likewise. Y'know. For being nearby for us tonight."

"_Did it hurt?_" Mitch asked.

"Did what hurt?"

"_Overcoming your emotional constipation to squeeze that one out."_

Rainbow Dash flew across the room, a casualty of defensive reflex.

"Oh fuck you!"

"_No thanks._"

"Fag."

"_Ballbuster._"

"Ass bandit."

"_Battle-axe._"

Buttercup flopped back down on her bed and flipped over onto her stomach.

"See you tomorrow?"

"_Hm, maybe. I'll text you._"

"You better. 'night."

"'_night._"

She ended the call and half-tossed her phone onto her bedside table. Although she'd told Brick she was going to bed, she wasn't the least bit tired, still adrenalized from the night's activities and seething at the thought of the "house guests" downstairs, who in her opinion had worn out their welcome the second they set foot on the eponymous doormat. Besides, it was only ten – still early for Buttercup, who tended to get up a good hour later than her sisters, not requiring the extensive time in front of the mirror that they did.

She took care of her appearance well enough – showered every morning (_so_ much more tolerable than the baths of her youth), shaved her legs once or twice a week, kept her nails trimmed short and remembered to floss. She wasn't even totally against makeup, ever since she'd read in some magazine in her dentist's waiting room that it was the war paint of the modern woman. It was a sentiment she could get behind, and every so often, when she woke up feeling especially fierce, would quickly black out her eyes with a thick, smudgy line of kohl, feeling as she did like a soldier applying greasepaint to minimize the glare of the sun in her eyes. Two slicks of papaya lip butter later and she had a look that was low-maintenance and said rock star, her favorite combination.

It was all that other goop she hated – she felt like her skin was suffocating in foundation (though Bubbles had gotten her to compromise with a tinted moisturizer with SPF), mascara made her eyelashes look and feel like plastic, she didn't get the point of using three hundred kinds of powder to mattify, sculpt, highlight, and color, all for one's face to end up looking exactly the same, and learning that a good number of lipsticks contained powdered fish scales – fish scales! – for shimmer put the fourth nail in that particular coffin (the first three being that almost all of them felt like wax, stank like old lady, and tasted like a stinky old lady made out of wax). All of that, as far as she was concerned, could go straight to hell.

But if the rest of the school year was going to be anything like today, she was _definitely_ going to have to stock up on the eyeliner.

X X X

Had someone told five-year-old Buttercup Utonium that one day she'd be sharing a breakfast cooked by Butch Jojo with her father, sisters, and arch nemeses, she'd have agreed wholeheartedly – while gently escorting them to the nearest funny farm.

Yet here she was, a little past seven a.m., with bedhead and morning breath, clad in her usual nighttime garb of a cut-off men's U.S. Army tee, Hulk boxers, and alligator slippers designed to look like they were eating her ankles, standing slack-jawed in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room as she watched the professor pile his plate with pancakes and Bubbles hog the syrup (as usual). Brick was pouring coffee, Blossom was spearing a sausage link with her fork, and Butch was flipping flapjacks in the air like it was his special power.

"Am I awake?" Buttercup groggily demanded, her voice still croaky from sleep. "Is this a nightmare?"

Five pairs of eyes swiveled to greet her, though only Bubbles and the professor did so with a smile.

"Morning, BC!" Bubbles chirped. "Butch made pancakes!"

"I can see that…" Buttercup muttered, her conversation with Mitch the previous night replaying in her brain. Brick held out a mug of coffee for her to take. She glared at it, and then at him, until he shrugged with a mumble of "Suit yourself," and set it down near her place at the kitchen table.

Buttercup cleared her throat. "Um…I shouldn't even need to ask this, but why is Butch making breakfast, and more importantly, why are you all _actually eating it?_"

"Because it's delicious!" Bubbles…explained, sort of.

"It _is_ pretty good," Blossom admitted. "Where'd you learn to cook like this?"

"Therapeutic boarding schools are big on the rehabilitative attributes of home ec," Brick answered for him.

"Yeah," Butch agreed, pouring an elaborate swirl of batter onto the griddle. "Fuckers've obviously never seen _Hell's Kitchen_."

"_Butch,_" Brick said sternly, glancing sidelong at the professor's raised eyebrow. "Watch the mouth."

"What? Chefs could make sailors blush, it's common fu—" The green-eyed boy caught himself despite his point. "It's common knowledge. I was just, y'know, demonstrating."

Brick rolled his eyes.

Buttercup, whose morning fuse took time and caffeine to grow any longer than her hair, went off.

"Hello?! Who watched him cook these?! How do you know what's in them?!"

Everyone but Brick paused in their chewing as they stared at her.

Butch ticked off the ingredients on his fingers with a level of sarcastic calm tuned to the exact frequency of Buttercup's irritation threshold.

"Flour, eggs, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace—"

"_Mace?!_" she shrilled, her usually hoarse voice cracking like a pubescent boy's.

"_The spice,_ idiot!" Butch snapped. "How the hell do _you_ of all people not know that?"

"Why the hell would _I_ of all people assume you meant the harmless one, with your fucking track record?!"

"_Hey!_" shouted Butch, then smirked. "Watch the mouth."

"_Both of you_ watch your mouths," Professor Utonium finally spoke up. "Buttercup, the pancakes are fine. They're even pumpkin, your favorite. Just sit down, have some breakfast, and let's everyone just enjoy the morning as much as we can."

Thus reprimanded (and grateful that the growl that trembled through her stomach at the word "pumpkin" had made minimal noise), Buttercup sulkily slumped into her seat between Blossom and their father. Forgetting in her personal pall of gloom who had poured it, she reached for the mug of coffee in front of her and took a sip, finding it black and sweet, just how she liked it.

"How is it?" Brick asked from the professor's other side. His expression was even but for the barest hint of a smirk at the corners of his mouth, and Buttercup's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"…it's fine," she warily confessed.

Brick's smile widened. "Thought so," he said, and waited for her to take another sip before adding, "Butch takes his the same way."

Buttercup choked. Blossom thumped her on the back as she coughed and gagged.

"Not funny, dude," Butch muttered, glaring daggers at his older brother as he picked up the pancake he'd utterly failed to catch mid-flip off the floor, and stomped rather harder than necessary on the lever of the trash can to throw it away.

"Don't feel bad," Blossom consoled her wheezing sister, nodding at her own mug of sugarless café au lait. "He got me and Bubbles, too."

"Gee," Buttercup grumbled, wiping her mouth with a napkin plucked from the center of the table, "that makes me feel _so_ much better."

It _was_ kind of interesting, Blossom almost pointed out, but didn't. Instead she cast a furtive glance at the professor, who was ostensibly reading the newspaper, but the subtle, unsettled crease between his eyebrows, not to mention the way his eyes weren't moving back and forth at all, told her that he was having similar thoughts.

Just how far did this whole "counterpart" thing extend? The superficial similarities were obvious, but beyond their outward appearances, just how alike _were_ they all?

Not Very, was Blossom's automatic response. The Boys were Bad, the Girls were Good: that in itself implied a whole slew of differences at their most basic levels.

Except, the tiny but tenacious voice of scientific objectivity waved a red flag from a back corner of her brain, morality – like art, and many other byproducts of higher intelligence – was inherently subjective. The existence of and adherence to a societal norm did not make any of its alternatives anthropologically deniable.

It didn't make the crimes the Boys committed – or used to commit – any less wrong, but they _were_ an inaccurate tool by which to judge the matrices of their core personalities, habits and characteristics.

It was an uncomfortable thought, and one Blossom was glad to suspend at the appearance of Boomer stumbling through the laboratory door, which had been left ajar after the professor had gone down to check on him and remove his I.V. earlier that morning.

The blond boy looked equal parts dazed and hunted, his deep blue eyes still glazed from sleep and wide with the same incredulity Buttercup's had possessed not ten minutes prior.

"Jeez, finally!" exclaimed Butch, sounding grouchy but grinning with sudden, unguarded openness. "It lives!"

"How ya feelin', man?" Brick asked, rising from his seat to clap a steadying hand on his youngest brother's shoulder.

Boomer blinked a few times, still frowning at the disturbingly domestic scene in front of him.

"Like I got hit by a very confused truck…" He shut his eyes and shook his head as if to dislodge the probably hallucination, then hissed in pain, one hand coming up to gingerly clutch at the visibly bruised place on his neck where the dart had hit. "Um, would someone care to fill me in on what the hell happened last night? –It _was_ last night, wasn't it? I haven't been out for days?"

"Less than twelve hours," the professor supplied. "You had something of a run-in with Antidote X, and your brothers brought you to me for treatment."

"Oh." Boomer looked a little disappointed that he hadn't been struck down in the midst of some grand battle he couldn't remember. "Is that why I feel like someone took a baseball bat to my…everything?"

"That's probably from the seizure," guessed Brick.

"I had a _seizure?_"

"It didn't last long," Butch promised. "Don't worry, you didn't piss yourself or anything."

"Good to know."

"You hungry?" the green-eyed boy asked, setting a plate in front of Buttercup, who scowled at the pancakes' design of two X's and a crescent-shaped "frown" from which protruded two "fangs" made out of sausage.

"Very funny, asshole," she muttered – but reached for the syrup anyway.

"Not yet," Boomer replied, leaning against the counter near the stove and rubbing at his eyes with thumb and forefinger, "but I'd kill for a cup of coffee."

"Good. The pot's over there."

"I'll make it for you!" Bubbles happily volunteered, setting her plate in the sink and retrieving a mug from the cupboard.

"Oh, uh…" Boomer's tongue stumbled over his surprise. "Okay. Um. Thanks."

"_One_ cup," the professor permitted. "After that, it's Gatorade or water for the rest of the day."

A few seconds later, Boomer examined the pastel smiling doughnuts that merrily encircled his cup.

"One of yours?"

Bubbles giggled. "How'd you know?"

Empty air hung where a snide remark would ordinarily have gone, but Buttercup had tuned out the rest of the world at her first bite of pancake – possibly because the one part of her that wasn't dying from mortification that Butch had the sheer audacity to cook this well had already died and gone to Heaven.

The pancakes were perfect. Fluffy, spongy, mildly sweet, with impeccably bubbled bottoms and just the right amount of _bite_ (Buttercup was of the belief that too many people feared cloves and that many a carrot cake and pumpkin pie suffered as a result of this deficiency). He buttered the griddle _every time_ so that each had a chance to obtain that wonderful, mottled look and texture that set truly amazing pancakes apart from their smooth, brown, comparatively boring but still tasty brothers. They filled her up, yet sat light in her stomach. They were the most wonderful abomination she had ever encountered…

"So what do you think?"

"They're…edible."

…and she'd sooner accept banishment from every IHOP in the country than admit it out loud.

"Tch. Whatever. Try not to lick the plate when you're done."

She pointedly put her still syrup-coated plate in the sink and slurped down the rest of her coffee before returning upstairs to shower. Blossom followed not long after so she could finish getting ready, and Bubbles loaded the dishwasher to have an excuse to linger while the professor quizzed Boomer for any aftereffects of either Antidote or Chemical X, which included testing his powers to see if any semblance of them had returned.

"I can't squint any harder, dude," Boomer griped to Butch, who'd been egging on the emergence of non-existent eyebeams. "Nothing's changed. I'm still Joe Blow. With a headache. Brick, man, I know it's only our second day, but would you mind if I skipped out?"

Brick shrugged, and Butch gaped.

"What, that's it? That's all it takes?" He snatched the frying pan Bubbles had been about to put in the dishwasher out of her hands and brought it against his forehead with a clang so loud it made everyone else's teeth rattle in sympathy.

"_Motherfff—_" Butch swore, dropping into a crouch and clutching his head.

Bubbles and Professor Utonium stared at him, dumbfounded.

"I think…" Butch mumbled, "I think I may have concussed myself…"

"Sucks to be you, then," said Brick, "because you're still going to school."

"What?! But – Boomer – head—?!"

"Please. If I let you off the hook every time you hurt yourself doing something stupid, your summer breaks would be eight months long. Besides, Boomer's not getting out of that much: you'll be bringing home his assignments for him."

Butch looked scandalized and utterly betrayed. "Why me?!"

"Because you share all his retard classes, that's why."

Bubbles pouted at the redhead's slur against ordinary placement, but was interrupted by a sudden steady, rhythmic thumping and only vaguely melodic noise blasting down from one of the rooms upstairs.

"The fuck is _that?_" Brick asked, directing a harassed-looking frown up at the ceiling, on the other side of which dirty screams had begun to hurl themselves at the floor.

"Asking Alexandria," Butch glumly supplied.

"That's Buttercup's getting ready music," explained Bubbles.

Brick looked distantly impressed. "Surprised Pinky lets her get away with that."

Bubbles shrugged. "They compromised. Buttercup gets to blast her music in the morning with the understanding that she wear her headphones after school, while Blossom's doing homework." She caught the leery look the professor was casting her way, and quickly backpedalled, "And me. I do homework, too. Um. I'm gonna go finishgettingreadynowbye!" She pecked her father angelically on the cheek and scurried out of the room.

Brick shook his head, mildly surprised to learn that Bubbles' ability to leave a cloud of dizziness like a parting gift had nothing to do with her powers. Of course, it could very well be the whole situation that was doing it: surreal didn't even begin to cover the happenings of the last eleven and a half hours, and he'd had more than his fill of all of it.

He announced to his brothers that it was time to kick rocks. Butch air-guitared his way out the door without a word, while Brick and Boomer lingered long enough for Professor Utonium to load up the blond boy's arms with three bottles of Glacier Cherry Gatorade and a can of Monster Rehab.

Brick shook the professor's hand. Boomer tried to, but, burdened as he was, settled for a nod of gratitude, and accepted a friendly pat on the back in return.

Butch waited until they were closer to their apartment than they were to the girls' place before he unbuckled his seatbelt to more easily rummage in one of his jeans' pockets.

"If we get pulled over, you're paying the ticket," Brick warned from behind the wheel.

Butch was already grinning triumphantly – never a good sign.

"Relax, man. Look at what I got."

Brick nearly swerved at the pair of black lace tanga panties his half-baked moron of a brother twirled around his right index finger.

"Where the fuck did you get those?" Brick demanded. "Tell me you did not go into one of their fucking rooms!"

"Dude, chill, I found 'em in the laundry room." He pressed the panties to his nose and inhaled deeply, eyes fluttering in bliss as he relished their scent. Brick grimaced.

Boomer looked like he couldn't decide whether he was disgusted or curious. "Whose do you think they are?" he asked, taking a cautious sniff at Butch's magnanimous sharing of the wealth.

"_Not_ Blossom's," Brick said automatically.

"No? Why not?"

"Are you kidding? That girl practically has 'sensible white cotton' tattooed on her ass."

"Granny panties," said Butch sagely, elaborating for Boomer's sake, whose head tilted thoughtfully.

"They smell kind of familiar…" he mused, to which Butch gave a skeptical snort.

"Yeah, right, like your face has ever been as close to a pussy as these have."

"My fingers have," Boomer pointed out with a shrug. "What about Buttercup?"

"Boyshorts," Brick and Butch said in unison, with Brick adding, "if she doesn't wear actual boxer-briefs."

"That only leaves Bubbles."

Boomer pinked a little across the nose at the thought, and the remaining couple of minutes before reaching the apartment were spent in contemplative silence, with all three staring unseeingly past the windshield, watching visions of pale, creamy thighs pressed chastely together above calves spaced childishly apart play across the glass, the mirage bracketed by turned-in toes and coy, girlish laughter.

"Hmm," grunted Brick, easing the truck into the parking lot of Russell's Auto Repair.

Boomer cleared his throat and glanced at Butch. "Can I—"

"Fuck you steal your own!" Butch snapped, leaping out of the car and bounding up the metal staircase on the side of the building to get into the apartment first and find the optimum hiding spot for his new treasure.

"Don't worry," Brick assured his youngest sibling. "He has the attention span of a squirrel on meth. We'll find 'em long before he can remember where he put them."

With only fifteen minutes until the first bell rang, Brick and Butch quickly brushed their teeth and changed into fresh clothing. Butch left first, rumbling away on his motorcycle; Brick, who refused to ride bitch, borrowed Boomer's truck.

After changing into lounge pants and a t-shirt, Boomer made a half-hearted attempt at panty-raiding Butch's room, but gave up when he realized he'd probably only injure himself further – the chaos was such that, even after a mere three weeks' residence, it was impossible to tell the difference between possible booby-traps and actual clutter. Besides, it was rare for him to have the whole place to himself, at least until the boys all got the lay of the land where Shit To Do was concerned, and he intended to enjoy the occasion to its fullest extent.

He set up base on the couch, surrounding himself with the Gatorade and Monster, Cool Ranch Doritos, and, because he was "sick," one half-hearted can of peaches and another of Chicken Noodle O's, complete with plans to use the same spoon for both.

Ensconcing his sore body in the warm cove of his bed-in-a-bag blue comforter, he couldn't help but wish he'd thought to nab the blanket he'd woken up with in the lab. Whomever's it was, it had been soft as kitten fur, and smelled sweetly – but not overpoweringly – of jasmine: the sort of blanket that would have the Grinch himself dreaming of sugarplums. Even the memory of it made Boomer feel warm, cozy…

…good.

As sore as he was, and despite the dull, fuzzy ache that throbbed in his head, he felt…good. Almost happy, even – at least, closer to content than he'd felt in a long, long time.

Funny, that.

Shrugging to himself – then wincing at the twin twinges in his shoulders – he decided he may as well take advantage of it while it lasted.

With a silly half-smile on his boyishly handsome face, he turned on the PlayStation, loaded MLB 12 The Show, and sat back see if he could make it to the majors before his brothers got home.


End file.
